Gholnecsar “Gholdy” Muhammad is the founder of HILL Pedagogies, an educational services consulting company that promotes and implements critical race theory-inspired concepts in school curriculums and school lesson plans. [1] She is the author of Cultivating Genius: How to Select Culturally and Historically Responsive Text, a critical race theory-inspired book that informs school curriculum development. [2]
Muhammad uses her book to promote and implement critical race theory-inspired curriculum in schools. She supports the far-left Black Lives Matter movement and mandated ethnic-minority group models for education. [3] She also has said that teachers “can’t teach black children” if they cannot say “black lives matter” [4] and alleges that “black people are being killed for being black” in the United States. [5]
Muhammad is an associate professor of literacy and language at Georgia State University.
Career
Gholdy Muhammad began her career in education as a reading, language arts, and social studies teacher and curriculum administrator in Cahokia, Illinois. [6] Subsequently she earned her Ph.D. in literacy, language, and culture from the University of Illinois Chicago in 2013. [7] That same year she began working as an associate professor of literacy and language at Georgia State University. [8]
In 2018, she received a three-year, $749,895, grant from the U.S. Department of Education to study and improve secondary schools’ literary instruction in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) content areas. [9] The grant project, “STEM in LIT(ERCIES): A Culturally and Historically Responsive Model for Teaching Literacy Across STEM,” is a critical race theory-inspired project to train 780 science and technology educators on Muhammad’s “four-layered equity model” about power, oppression, and “social justice.” [10]
In 2020, Muhammad published Cultivating Genius: How to Select Culturally and Historically Responsive Text, a critical race theory-inspired book that informs school curriculum development in 2020. [11] [12] [13] This book made the 2020 top-ten list of books from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. [14]
Muhammad is the 2021 recipient of the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE)’s Outstanding Elementary Educator in English Language Award [15] and the 2014 recipient of the NCTE Promising New Teacher Award, among other awards. [16]
Critical Race Theory
Gholdy Muhammad thinks children can never be too young to learn critical race theory-inspired concepts such as “anti-racism” and demands to hold publishers accountable for lack of “diverse and critical content” by creating a new curriculum designed for minorities and written by minorities. [17]
Muhammad opposes using the phrase “learning standard” because she believes the term “standard” “comes from Eurocentricity,” is steeped in “whiteness,” [18] and is not a term that comes from minority communities. [19] She also says teachers can have a better mindset from “proper education, therapy, and anti-racism, anti-bias, and anti-oppression exercises” [20] and supports “rewriting of learning standards for equity and excellence,” to evaluate how teachers teach identity development and liberation within classrooms. [21]
As a result, Muhammad has sought to influence curriculum development and educational standards by implementing elements of the “four-part equity model” in her book, Cultivating Genius in schools. By teaching “racial, cultural, gender, environmental, and community identities” to students through the lens of “criticality, equity, and anti-oppression,” she aims to make students “woke” socio-politically. [22]
In June 2021, Muhammad spoke at the “Dismantle White Supremacy Culture in Schools” conference [23] alongside far-left race theorists Ibram X. Kendi; Bettina Love, the co-founder of the far-left Abolitionist Teaching Network; [24] and Joe Truss. [25] She has spoken about critical race theory-inspired “equity” in education at an event sponsored by Google; [26] as a featured speaker at left-of-center Facing History and Ourselves’ Equity and Justice Summit; [27] as a keynote speaker at an event hosted by the left-of-center group called Positive Racial Identity Development in Early Education (PRIDE), which is funded by the left-of-center W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Henry L. Hillman Foundation; [28] and at the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE Muslim Women), an independent nonprofit which operates as a partner project of the left-of-center Fund for the City of New York (FCNY). [29]
Black Lives Matter
Muhammad supports the far-left Black Lives Matter movement and has said that if you “can’t say black lives matter, you can’t teach black children.” [30] [31] She thinks teachers and administrators should teach “black lives matter to teachers” so it can be incorporated into math, science and social studies curriculums. [32] Her critical race theory-inspired curriculums have been adopted in Chicago and New York. [33]
Personal Information
Gholnecsar “Gholdy” Muhammad holds a B.S. in Elementary Education from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, an M.A. in Educational Administration from Lindenwood University. [34] and received a PhD in literacy, language, and culture from the University of Illinois Chicago in 2013. [35] She resides in Chicago [36] and also operates HILL Pedagogies Services, Inc. [37]