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]