How Do You Cultivate Genius In All Students?
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From KQED. You're listening to MindShift, the podcast that explores the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I'm Nima Gobeer. And I'm Ki Sung. You may think of genius as a rare title reserved for a select few after they achieve something big. Eureka! An apple drops from a tree and you understand gravity. Ouch. Oh. Or your key gets zapped by lightning while flying a kite in a thunderstorm. Boom!

You've harnessed electricity. I am a genius. Genius. I am the smartest man alive. But one genius, Goldie Muhammad, brings us a slightly different approach. Genius means how are our students intellectually creative, smart? What can they do that is special, intuitive, innovative, creative?

Goldie Muhammad is a professor, teacher trainer and author of the bestselling book Cultivating Genius. Genius is her specialty. And she says we shortchange ourselves by reserving genius to a select few. We have more to gain by starting earlier and seeing genius as the brilliance that can be developed in each person. After all, those adults who we consider genius got their start somewhere in childhood.

Think of the brilliance in Jennifer Doudna. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award you the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Long before she won the Nobel Prize for her CRISPR gene editing research, she was a high school student who didn't even see herself as a scientist. She told the Washington Post she didn't think about becoming a scientist until one person saw the brilliance in her, 10th grade chemistry teacher Jeanette Wong.

But not everyone gets a Jeanette Wong at the front of their class. And it's not that teachers can't see potential. As a teacher trainer, Goldie Muhammad noticed the gap between how teachers saw brilliance in their own children versus what they saw in the students they taught. I would say, tell me about your students. I want to design something beautiful for them. And they would say things like, they can't read. And I would say, no, start again. And they would say things like,

They're confrontational, defiant. Teachers would tell me this in high schools where you have to test to get into that high school, you had to test at a college level. And then I would ask them to tell me about their own sons and daughters and magically it became positive. But that positivity did not carry over particularly to black children and Latinx children.

There's a lot of internalized bias we have in this country and how we see people in the world affects our kids. I treat them as they are geniuses.

And when we do it, we'll see a whole type of teacher show up that might be different. We'll see a whole different type of child show up. And it's nothing but beautiful. Trust me. Muhammad spent years researching how to cultivate brilliance in students. And she found what she was looking for in early 1800s Black literary societies. ♪

They were mostly in major cities in so-called free northern states. One group of about 20 women would gather weekly to learn and debate. They developed literacy skills, but also learned how to advocate for themselves and think critically about the world. Muhammad quotes observers of these groups who noted the just refinement and large intelligence of the participants.

They also had particularly sharp pens and would write pieces each week and have them critiqued by a committee, after which their writing was debated and brought to the public in an effort to change hearts, minds, and laws. Their genius is there, just like Goldie said. If you go back to these literary societies and those thinkers,

And educators, historically, they were doing this work well before our time. And so when we compare schools today, schools are not as intellectually rigorous or advanced, in my opinion, as we were historically.

She distilled their techniques into a system she coined the Historically Responsive Literacy Framework. It's made up of five tenets to cultivate genius. Let's review them. The first pursuit is identity. Identity.

As our ancestors in these literary societies were reading and writing and coming together and learning, they were cultivating a sense of self. Their collective Black identity and the diversity and Blackness, but also their individual and personal identities, their racial, gender, ethnic, personal identities.

Identity development is important at all ages, and ignoring it can lead you to a crisis like not knowing who you are or feeling bad about who you are and thinking you're limited in what you can do.

Without identity work, you might internalize negative messages about you or do things to avoid being cast into a stereotype, even if it's against your own interests. Back in the 1800s, identity struggles were around being recognized as whole people. Today, we still struggle with systemic racism and kids can find it in the classroom or on social media. The second pursuit is skills. Skills. This is learning the proficiencies.

For language and English and history, science and mathematics, fine arts. This is what we call today like the common core state standards. These were the proficiencies and competencies needed for the academic content areas. Skills. It's at the core of so much in school and helps you become an active member of your community.

But we also need more. The third pursuit is intellectualism. Intellectualism. They didn't just want the skills to stay static. They wanted to apply the skills to new knowledge that they can put into action.

And so the third pursuit of intellectualism meant that they were becoming smarter about new people, places, things, and concepts. So intellectualism is pushing beyond basic skills, having that motivation to be smarter. In literary societies, this meant deepening knowledge through discussion and debate, which helped them make arguments out in the real world. The fourth pursuit is criticality. Criticality.

They wanted to not be passive consumers and producers of knowledge, but to be critical consumers. She writes that criticality is the ability to read texts, to understand power, authority and anti-oppression, but also work towards social transformation.

Criticality is proactive. And so in this realm, teachers today are helping students to understand, to name, interrogate and disrupt oppression such as racism, sexism, racism.

ableism, ageism, homophobia, and other types of hurt, pain, and harm in the world. That's a heavy load, which is why the last tenet is so important. The fifth and final pursuit is joy. Joy! I notice how our ancestors always elevated beauty in the world, in humanity, even in the most painful situations and contexts.

They were intentional about their joy. They were intentional about starting their stories with their genius and their happiness. Joy is something we all need, especially in curriculum. If you're white, you have a canon of Eurocentric literature and art to draw from, to feel good about. If you're a person of color, you might notice lessons about us are usually about wars, colonialism, the worst possible things that can happen. And it's important for everyone to have joy.

Professor Muhammad says in order to cultivate genius in our students, focus on these five tenets: identity, skills, criticality, intellectualism, and joy. While this came out of Black literary societies, it's good for all students: white, Black, Asian, Latino, anyone. This framework made a lot of sense for Dominique Harard, a teacher who's been an evangelist for historically responsive literacy.

She first encountered it with middle schoolers when she was a college student volunteering with an after-school enrichment program in Washington, D.C. One day, she picked an assignment from a binder of options. The assignment? To listen to a song. And so students were asked to listen to Bob Marley's Redemption Song. This was a song that none of the students had heard before. All the students in the room were students of color. So I'll die into the merchant ship

After listening to the song, they were supposed to write about what they had heard.

And they ended up having a deep discussion. And the students carry the conversation on their own. And the things that I heard were things that I had never heard even adults really articulate in such a beautiful way. And the way the students were connecting back and forth with their understanding of what it means to be free, there was just such a beautiful way in which they were sharing their thinking and their understanding.

A different type of literacy took place in the form of conversation.

Students already had these ideas and skills to bring to the discussion. Looking back, Dominique realizes it was the sum of all five of Goldie Muhammad's tenets for cultivating genius, identity, criticality, intellectualism, skills, and joy. And that conversation ended up being the spark that pushed her to become a teacher.

It just was sort of the first step in me realizing that education could be bigger, it could be more, and it's connected to something that's bigger than skills. It's not just skills. It's about who you are and how you see the world and your place in it. It was really those big ideas that they had that were already there. Like I wasn't unlocking anything that they didn't know that they had. They knew that that was in there and this was just one space that they were able to share it in.

This kind of responsive education might feel different for a lot of adults because it's not how we grew up. There was way more rote learning and not a lot of discussion. So we've talked about historically responsive literacy among adults and adolescents, but cultivating a genius can start even younger. Stick around to find out how Dominique Carrard cultivates a class full of first grade geniuses and how it's led to a budding comedy career for one student.

Support for MindShift comes from Landmark College. Landmark College's fully online Certificate in Learning Differences and Neurodiversity provides educators with research-based skills and strategies that improve learning outcomes for neurodivergent students.

Earn up to 15 graduate-level credits and specialize in one of the following areas, post-secondary disability services, executive function, or autism, on campus or online. Learn more at landmark.edu slash certificate.

Identity, skills, intellectualism, criticality, and joy. These are big concepts that can be worked out in first grade. This is Dominique Harard's class at Pierce School near Boston. He thought that they were getting married and they were going to go up in a hot balloon. I wish I could go up in a hot balloon.

They're talking about the book they just read, Milo Imagines the World, by Matt DeLaPena and Christian Robinson. It's about a young boy who's taking the subway with his sister to visit their mother in prison. Milo imagines the lives of the passengers based on what he sees, like a woman in a wedding dress, street dancers, or people who look dirty. What is something that, Oliver, somebody might not know about you just by looking at you?

They might know I go to school, but they don't know I still have a math class and

And an art class. So they don't know that you take art and math classes that aren't a part of school. What about you, Slim? By talking about how Milo sees others, these kids get to talk about their own identities and how people see them. And so Milo was thinking the way that he was because sometimes people have ideas in their mind about what somebody can be or do just based on how they look.

And so the kind of fancy word for that is implicit bias. But for us, we're just kind of thinking about sometimes when you look at somebody, you might say, oh, I know what that person does. And the kids bring criticality by thinking about what's wrong with the situation and how it could be improved. It's basically like judging a book by its cover and knowing like, oh, this book's going to be about like... I love that description. Yeah, because sometimes...

Sometimes you might think you know what something is about, but you've got to really open that book and read that book to figure it out. And even though this is a book about a boy visiting his mom in prison, Dominique makes sure to point out the joy in their relationship. Joy gives us the stamina to be cultivated into geniuses. What do you think Milo would want people to know about

him and his mom. That people love each other so much and they're a part of a big big family. Yeah and like even though his mom is in jail like she she still reads him bedtime stories like she still loves him she's still so happy when he comes to to this place that she's

The conversation these kids are having is different than what we grew up with. A lot of us didn't have the tools to talk about our identity until we were in college. College is when I really explored my Asian American identity. And it's what Melanie Alexander remembers about exploring her Black identity. I'm like, we might be the same age because that's exactly what I remember from my education also.

Melanie's daughter, Devin, is in Ms. Harard's class and on the cusp of Gen Z. With Devin, I feel like the conversation is open-ended. We're not sure where the conversation is going to lead about diversity and inclusion and what she really understands to be kindness or empathy or any of those large topics because she's still open to exploring it, knowing that exploring really is what you're supposed to be doing.

Identity is considered non-academic and it's usually grouped with practices like social and emotional learning. But countless studies have shown us that these softer skills, like identity work, actually help kids do better in academics.

Let's look at another way Melanie saw historically responsive literacy show up in Devin's class. The kids were just back on Zoom and Devin was upset about something. And then she went on a small rant and said, you know, I don't know how to use the buttons. I don't like that I'm not with my friends. And she just kept going on about, I don't, I don't. And Dominique said, that's okay, honey. This is not the way school is supposed to be. So I think that

Her idea at the time was about things being hard for us, but we all have some power and choice about how we approach those obstacles or problems and try to solve them. So Devin wrote a book. Hi, CAM friends. I'm going to read you a book, and it tells you all the things you need to do when you have a problem.

So let's start reading. Her first book was about being frustrated and what the little girl, the main character, did to approach the problem. That's what it was. What do you do when you have a problem? That book stemmed from a question that was posed in Devin's class. Those are different questions.

When I have a problem, I fix the problem. I take a deep breath. I look for clues. Sometimes I ask for help. And it was really, I think, Dominique trying to get at the idea of resiliency. I feel good because I didn't give up.

The end. What parent wouldn't be thrilled to see their kid take the initiative to write a book and illustrate it? She was applying her literacy skills, writing about who she is and what she's capable of. And she gives a sort of director's commentary on the book she wrote. This page I needed to ask for help. My mommy helped me a little bit. But then I realized that I could fix the problem.

Then I tried to fix the problem and I made a few accidents, but I could fix them.

Much like what we heard about those brilliant women in literary societies, she's giving feedback on her own writing. It may be a jump, but if you squint, you can see how eventually Devin can grow into a woman in one of those literary societies, writing essays, books, seeking feedback, and making her mark on the world. And let's not forget the joy. What did the egg say to the cook? You crack me up.

Oh my gosh, her second book is a joke book. Oh, will you remember me in a minute? Yes. Will you remember me in an hour? Yes. Will you remember me in a thousand years? Yes, 100%. Knock knock. Who's there? You forgot me already?

Okay, so if I were a teacher interested in trying out historically responsive education, what would I need to do? Well, here's what Goldie Muhammad recommends. You know, the first thing I'm always going to tell my students to do, or in this case, the teacher...

is to cultivate your mind, your thinking. You must read. You must seek knowledge. You must learn history. She asked folks to read books by Mary McLeod Bethune, Carter G. Woodson, Bettina Love, and more. They must have their hearts open enough and their minds ready to receive knowledge and truth. And when you read it, you must read it with an open heart.

You got to get your heart right for this work or all the strategies I can give you will not work. They won't do anything for you. We know this is the case in how people learn. They have to be open to it. And that's the case with teaching strategies too. But once that's established, some teachers, they need more of the practical coaching after that. How to write and develop curriculum. Curriculum is life.

Curriculum is telling narratives and stories about the world, about humanity. Curriculum is beautiful, is thoughtful, is intellectually stimulating. I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that Goldie Muhammad's book is a bestseller. So we'll probably see more teachers cultivating genius by incorporating these historically responsive literacy practices. Which include... Joy! Joy!

What is a bunny's favorite music? A bunny's favorite music? I have no idea. Hip-hop. Hip-hop! Thanks so much to Professor Goli Muhammad, Dominique Harard, Danielle Rabina, Jeremy Fisher, Melanie Alexander, and Devin Whitfield. And thanks also to Ben Wessel for help with production.

MindShift is produced by me, Ki Sung. And me, Nima Gobier. Our editor is Jessica Plachek. Seth Samuel is our sound designer. Erica Aguilar is our head of podcast. And Holly Kernan is KQED's chief content officer. And if you love MindShift and enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. It's the best way for people to find out about the show, and it helps us keep going. And if you want to share your thoughts on this episode, you can find us on Twitter at MindShiftKQED.

Thank you for listening.