About Dr. Muhammad
Meet Dr. Gholdy Muhammad
Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad is a Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she teaches with a focus on literacy, language, and culture. She has served as a classroom teacher, literacy specialist, school district administrator, curriculum director, and school board president. She studies Black historical excellence in education, with the goal of reframing curriculum and instruction today, and has received numerous honors and awards for that work. Her Histories, Identities, Literacies, and Liberation (HILL) Model has been adopted in thousands of schools and districts. She speaks at dozens of conferences each year, including the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), UNITED Conference on Education, and more. Dr. Muhammad's thought-leadership has laid the foundation for her bestselling titles, Cultivating Genius (2020) and Unearthing Joy (2022).
In Cultivating Genius, Dr. Muhammad presents a four-layered equity framework — one that is grounded in history and restores excellence in literacy education. This framework, which she names Historically Responsive Literacy, was derived from the study of literacy development within 19th-century Black literacy societies. The framework is essential and universal for all students, especially youth of color, who traditionally have been marginalized in learning standards, school policies, and classroom practices.
In her follow-up to Cultivating Genius, Unearthing Joy, Dr. Muhammad adds a fifth pursuit — joy — to her groundbreaking instructional model. She defines joy as more than celebration and happiness, but also as wellness, beauty, and healing for oneself and across humanity. She shows how teaching from cultural and historical realities can enhance our efforts to cultivate identity, skills, intellect, criticality, and, indeed, joy for all students.
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“Curriculum is a special and creative space where all teaching and learning begins in and around schools. It is a space to discover the self and new things in the world.”
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