Ijeoma Kola: 0:13

Welcome to the Cohort Sisters podcast, where we give voice to the stories, struggles and successes of Black women and non-binary folks with Doctor degrees. I'm your host, dr Ijama Cola, and today we are welcoming a groundbreaking educator whose work has completely revolutionized the landscape of education. Dr Golnassar Mohamed received her PhD in Literacy, language and Culture at the University of Illinois, chicago, and has a multifaceted career that has spanned from K through 12, classroom education to school board leadership and now as a professor, author and speaker. Dr Mohamed was named among the top 1% of edu-scholar public influencers due to her impact on policy and practice. Dr Mohamed's instructional model, outlined in the bestselling book Cultivating Genius and Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, has resonated through thousands of US schools and districts, bridging the gap between research and practice, with numerous awards, accolades and a very well-deserving transformative impact that reaches from policy to classrooms, as well as a second book now out called Unearthing Joy A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive Curriculum Instruction. We welcome Dr Golnassar Mohamed to the Cohort SIS's podcast.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 1:33

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. I honor what a beautiful group, cohort sisters, and the work that you all are doing, so I'm so thankful to be here, sis.

Ijeoma Kola: 1:44

We're glad you're here too. So before we kind of get into your work and your doctoral journey and the book, the books let's know a little bit about you when you're not, you know, educating the world in all the different ways that you educate. Where are you from, where do you live now and what do you like to do when you're not working?

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 2:04

Well, I'm from the Chicago area. I grew up in Gary, indiana and around Chicago and I felt like I've always known I wanted to teach and teach people and teach children in the world. I'm currently in Chicago. I just returned. I spent some time in Atlanta in the warmth of the sun and then I returned recently maybe the last two years, two or three years to Chicago to take a position here. And you know, when I'm not doing the work that I do in the world, I am resting. I am trying to drink water and walk and exercise. I like to do nothing. I like to read and write creative things as well and just spend time with my family. I have a beautiful husband, beautiful daughter and my parents are with me, and I like to spend time with my family, my friends, travel and just be, just be in a space of nothingness.

Ijeoma Kola: 3:18

You are the first person on the podcast, to my recollection, who, when asked that question about what do they do outside of work, said rest, and so I love that, because I would not even have thought about that as a response. I love that you shared that. As well as really grounding yourself in family and taking care of yourself and just being so, how did you become interested in literacy, especially literacy in the black community?

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 3:48

Well, I first became interested in literacy due to my upbringing as a Muslim. So a lot of black people, like in the 60s, took on to or studied and took up Islam, the nation of Islam back then and they became Muslims, and my mother was one of those people, right. So it was like this kind of combination for black liberation, black justice and Islam and peace, right and religion through the faith. And so, growing up as a Muslim, I would read the Quran and how. The Quran spoke about literacy and the importance of reading and writing and thinking. And there was this particular verse in the Quran named Ikra, and Ikra in Arabic means to read, to understand, to perceive, and in the verse it said don't just read words, but read the world, read signs, read to understand context. And that was my very first understanding of literacy. I wanted to not just read words, but I wanted to read people.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 5:08

There was also a verse that says imagine if all the oceans were the ink to the pen. That's how much, I guess, rewards or benefits that God can give you. And I just thought that was such a great, beautiful metaphor. I remember reading that as a kid and I wanted to write, and every time I would write, I would think about putting the ink pen in the ocean. That was my ink and I would just write and I would have endless things to say and all these ideas would come to me.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 5:45

And then, growing older, like as a black woman, I lived in the library and when I wanted to buy books I would save my money and go to the thrift stores and the Goodwill and I would build my own collection at home and I would get some of the best books for like 50 cents and things like that. And I started to read Toni Morrison and Gwendolyn Brooks and Black Women and Maya Angelou and they helped me to understand the beauty of literacy and how literacy is connected to freedom and liberation and self-determination and defining who we are, and so all of that was kind of very pivotal for me later studying literacy more formally in college, yes.

Ijeoma Kola: 6:32

So I was also one of those kids who I didn't buy a lot of books but I read a lot of books. My whole thing was like every weekend at the library, like checking out a whole stack of books that the librarian was like you can't carry them and I was like watch me.

Ijeoma Kola: 6:46

I will carry all 20 of these books in my little scrawny hand. So I also shared a real, true love for reading when I was younger. So you started to mention your academic trajectory. You studied literacy in college. Can you just walk us through from college to the doctoral degree? What were some of the pivotal moments that even inspired you to pursue a doctorate? Did you take time off between? Did you go straight through? Can you walk us through your academic journey a little bit?

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 7:19

Absolutely. So I will see you in after will. When I graduated high school on enter college, there was a program called Golden Apple Scholars of Illinois, beautiful program that takes maybe about 100 or so young people who are in high school or early years of college and they train and prepare us on how to be a teacher. They train us in theory and practice, research, scholarship, way before we enter our program. So you know, when I started my program in education I got my undergraduate degree in elementary education where I was hoping to teach anywhere between K-8, k-9, great levels. I really loved middle school. So I to teach middle school I had to get endorsements. So my endorsements were both social studies and literacy and reading particularly. So I was certified. I took extra reading classes and literacy classes and social sciences to learn how to teach both of those great levels I mean both of those contents in middle school. So I became a middle school teacher for a number of years and then I really wanted to go into leadership.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 8:35

I would notice that I would do leadership type things with my colleagues even my first year teaching. I would do workshops and programs. I mean it's like how much did I know after one year of teaching. But I created a workshop and I wanted people to come, because I would read an article or read a book and think I knew it so well that I can teach it to somebody else and at the heart, at the heart of a teacher. That's what teachers do. We read something, we want to share it with the world, and so I would do that. I would create workshops for teachers. I would ask my principal if I could have five ministers in every staff meeting to teach something new to my colleagues, and people would tell me to sit down. Who is this woman? What is she doing? She don't know nothing, you know. They would say great thing and I didn't sit down.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 9:21

But I noticed that I had some leadership qualities and that led to my master's in leadership and administration. I said, well, maybe I can do this for the whole school and be a principal. And I got to be interim principal for a little bit and I'm like this is absolutely not what I want to do. I was really interested. I went back to myself and I said, you know, when I lead others and lead teachers, it's always in the realm of curriculum and instruction. And I noticed, like the workshops, the ideas I would share, the modeling, I would go into classrooms and show them what I was doing. So I said this is not really exactly principal life, but this is more so like a curriculum leader, a coach or something. So I used my degree, my master's degree, to be a literacy coach and then eventually I became a curriculum director, right where I was working across the district and across schools, across children, across different grades, all these things to really lead curriculum and instruction in a district, co-lead it with a team of folks. And I got to the point. And now I'm in a district where most of the students are black, most of the school board, the teachers, the police department is white, and what came with that, sadly, was not knowing, honoring, loving our kids the way we should. I was working at a district level where I would hear very harmful language spoken about our parents, about our community, and because a lot of the folks lived in that community, they thought they had the right to say whatever they wanted to say about us.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 11:17

Even though the demographics changed greatly, I would notice that a lot of practices were just not working, a lot of the curriculum was very poor, and I said to myself at that time, my mind was I have two choices Either I'm going to stay here and sort of move up the ladder, as people say, and get into a position where I can impact a school board, a district more, maybe superintendency, or. But to be a superintendent, I really should have been a principal a little longer. But or I would go back and kind of live out one of my other lifestreams is to do what I do at a different scale, which was to be a professor, and so I chose the ladder. I said maybe I could have a different impact if I can write, if I can train teachers. Now, I didn't think in my wildest dreams that my impact would be what it is today. I just thought, like it will, I would train the next generations of teachers in that state, in that area, and it would have an impact on that school district, which was still wider.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 12:31

So I made the choice to leave my job, and I was very young at this time I was, I was a district administrator over people that were double in my age and I said, well, let me leave and go to school full time. So I chose a program at UIC, university of Illinois, chicago, because they had a reputation for literacy, language and culture and they had strong professors there and I wanted to study with them, I wanted to learn from them and I thought it'd be really cool to live in Chicago. And my father had come into my life and so I had some personal motivations to get to know him. And that's when I entered the language, literacy and culture program at UIC, where I became a graduate student, full time, taking major pay cut from having a salary to not having a salary.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 13:35

Because I went full time, because I wanted to do it like completely, I wanted to be fully immersed in the experience, and so for four years I only took two classes a semester and I did not have a family of my own. I wasn't married, I didn't have kids, and so it was just me and the archives, the library, the books. Really, that was my full time experience of learning and I finished my program in four years, taking a lot of courses on literacy and writing and reading and history and blackness, all the things which led to my dissertation study, which I can talk about or not, but it led to me finishing and completing a dissertation which really became the pivotal moment that helped to define and conceptualize which later became my books and the work that I do across the world.

Ijeoma Kola: 14:41

So I actually I do want to talk about your dissertation, but I'm glad that you started to get to the question before I got there, which is to kind of link the dissertation and the work that you did while you were in your graduate training to the work that you do now. And the reason why I would love for you to speak on this is because lots of people in the Coheersons community are current doctoral students. Maybe they're writing their dissertations now and they're trying to think, like you know, what is the utility of this later on in life, like what can it possibly become? And for people who are in bookfields I was in a bookfield, I'm a historian it was, you know, very clear to me that, like you need to write the dissertation because it will become a book, but that isn't necessarily the case for all scholars.

Ijeoma Kola: 15:23

So would love if you could talk about. You know, when you were writing the dissertation, did you think it would become a book? And then how did it evolve over time to not just one book but two books, and I'm sure there will be more and more works coming in the future.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 15:40

You know, I did not think it would become a lot of what it became. I mean, I don't know, my mind just wasn't there. You know, when it got to my doctoral process, like a lot of students, I was getting to become frustrated and tired and I finished in like four years, most people. It takes them seven, ten years, you know, to feel that and to experience. I mean to experience that long of a time in a program. But so I took I did not want to be a professor at one point either Because I said to myself, well, will I? Would I really have a larger impact? I said maybe my best place is to go back to the classroom.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 16:24

After all of that, I was probably going to end up back in the classroom because I said I'll be directly with children, impacting their lives. And that's a hard something because you're always asking yourself to what end, what is the purpose of, why I'm doing this? And again, I wanted to. Impact was very important to me because I'm in education, working with schools, and and so I was always going back and forth Well, I haven't impacted being a principal, a superintendent, a coach, a professor, a teacher, educator, back to a teacher again. So, and I think you can have an impact anywhere. You can make it be into whatever you want it to be. And I had to notice something about myself. I would be writing like five to eight hours a day. I would spend the night writing at a 24 hour Starbucks. It was the only place that was open 24 hours where I can write at 3am, because at 3, 4am my my mind came alive. It is not like that anymore.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 17:25

But back then my mind came alive and I would write. I would almost write a chapter of my dissertation in one sitting. So I noticed something like I was doing the work of a professor. I was doing the research, I was doing the writing, whether or not I thought I wanted to do it. My body, everything, my practices said you're already there. And people. Then I had to listen to what people were saying about me. They were like this is what the world needs to hear, and I knew.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 17:54

After, after the end of my first year, I did a program called Black Girls Right and I I gathered 16 black girls from Chicago from ages 13 to 17. I have been studying at the time about black literary societies of the 19th century. I'm sure that's something that will be interested in you as a historian, but I was. I was a historical scholar. I would study the black excellence, the black genius of the past and use it as a guide, a roadmap to curriculum and instructional decisions we make with children today. And so I wanted to know what happens if I mimic, if I study deeply these literary societies, then I mimic the practices, I mimic sort of the texts that they read, and I would. I would want to see how black girls today respond, and do they respond in the same ways that black women responded back in the 1800s? So that sort of became and I would notice something. I would notice joy that flowed through my body every time I did this work and that's how I knew I was where I was supposed to be and that eventually I would do these institutes every summer, which will become my dissertation study, where I would formally study questions about writing representations.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 19:18

You know, in search for full vision became the name of my dissertation study to honor Alice Walker and many other black women. And I wanted to know how do black girls write when created, when put in a space that's created like these literary societies? Which types of identities do they write through? What do they write about, what helps them to write? That became my dissertation study. So it was just black girl literacy writing study and after you know, I knew it was special because I was getting awards for it. I was getting, I felt it was special. That's enough to make something special If you feel joy when you produce it right. And the girls thought it was special and people other people thought it was special and they were honoring the work right. So it was a lot of you know signs for me to say that I should keep doing it. And that's what I did and I. But eventually I took the historical part of my work and I wanted to expand that part more, so I wrote all these articles on black girls I published.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 20:30

We are not a book field, we are article field. And so I had to publish articles because I took my first position and you need peer reviewed articles to get tenure. So I focused on not a book but on articles so I can solidify my position. And then I really amplified the historical research more and I loved it and I thought to myself this is the new, this is the next big thing in education. I remember telling that to my bestie and I remember filling it and so people would ask me for a book. They're like you need to write a book. And the field people in education, like teachers, administrators they're like we love what you're saying. But it was almost like they were saying we'll trust you more if you had a book. And I say you can trust me without a book. I know what I'm talking about.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 21:19

I did the work and they said no, you know you should really consider a book, but for years I didn't. My body didn't tell me to write the book, so I didn't. And then book publishers would say we want a book because your name is getting well known and they're thinking the book would sell because that's their lens, and so they wanted a book on black girls because that's all the work I've been publishing. And I would say to some publishers no, it's this historical work that's really good right now. It's going to be special. And some people said, no, they don't want it and they didn't get it. And so when I wrote the book, I wrote my first book in. It's been building.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 22:02

So when I sat down to write, I maybe wrote it in like 16 days because it was in me, I'd been writing about it, talking about speaking on it, dissertating, as people say. It was in me and I drafted I mean the, the, the, the editing. You know that took much longer, but the core skeleton of the book came out. It just poured out of me and and I loved it, I thought it was special and I didn't. You know, people always say do you think it would have sold that many copies? Did you think it would have the impact? And I said it didn't matter. I felt like it was something that I feel like my creator will be pleased with, that my parents will be pleased with, that, I'm pleased with. That's enough to create something and that's how the book really came to be. So it's it's like telling this bigger story of what you've been doing. It's all a part of the story, right?

Ijeoma Kola: 23:05

I I'm so shocked, first of all as someone who really struggles to write, struggles to write academically.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 23:11

I can write, write those stories, but I struggled to write academically.

Ijeoma Kola: 23:15

So the fact that you were able to kind of put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and get the first draft of a book out that quickly just is really a testament to what you said.

Ijeoma Kola: 23:27

It was in you like you really really knew and lived and breathed and really believed that the work needed to be shared. So I'm so excited to hear that it was a really pleasant process for you. Can you actually talk a little bit about the your experience working with publishers? So you kind of alluded to publishers wanted something from you, people in the education field wanted something from you. How did you negotiate these different kind of interest groups and audiences who wanted something from you and potentially, like, wanted different things from you, and then how did you balance, like being able to write really like what you wanted to share, this equity model based on the historical research and knowledge that you had gathered? How did you kind of navigate those tensions?

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 24:18

Well, I start. The more I'm in academia, the more I'm an academic academia, and I say that because I struggled. I was writing all these research, empirical pieces and schools were not changing. My colleagues, the ancestors, the scholars who I've loved, who have come before me, they're writing all these pieces, millions of dollars in grants that we were getting. I mean, I got grant money, nothing's changing.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 24:50

So listen, I am very practical in my life and I had to say, well, so what is the point? So that I can say get a stamp of tenure. It has to be more than that. Now, for some fields that's enough. And let me tell you something it is very beneficial to write up research for the sake of scholarship, for the sake. I'm not saying that. But when you're in the field of education, that alone cannot be the goal. We have to see schools changing. And for other fields, like history and English, that's enough. But we are talking about children's lives, so my field is a little different.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 25:34

So when I finally decided to write a prospectus and a proposal for a book, I wrote one for Black Girls, a Black Girls book. I wrote one for historically responsive literacy in the work with literary societies this model I had developed and publishing companies. I didn't really know what to do so I just reached out to them personally. I said this is who I am, like my name. I introduced myself. This is my proposal. If you will, please take a look at it, because we don't need an agent, we can just contact the editor who's over it. And some people were very rude and dismissive to me, like even in my very kind, loving email of introducing myself. They would sort of go to if you think that we're, if you just wanna get a competing offer, we're not here for that.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 26:23

Now I didn't even have an offer or a contract. I don't even know why that person came to that. Now, years later, that same person emailed me and said hey, do you still wanna do a book? I said how dare you ask me? After being rude and dismissive to me, and I said and then she apologized. But I said you know, do you understand what black women go through in this world? All I did was say this is my idea. Will you read it? If you did not have the time, you could have said I'm sorry, I do not have the time. I gave her all kinds of responses. She said to me, but I said this is not the time to come back to me, it's too late. She asked me for the same book. I said you know, Cultivating Genius is the book. So I had those kinds of moments. And then I had people that would just never email me back. And so it was between two publishers. One publisher did not want Cultivating Genius. They wanted the Black Girl book.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 27:22

My spirit told me it was time to write Cultivating Genius. And there was one company I wanted to not go with. An academic one was an academic press, one was a practitioner, what we call like professional books, press Like a trade, like a trade. Yeah, that a teachers would read, right. So I the one, the academic press. They wanted the book I was. My spirit didn't tell me to write. So the trade, the professional books, which became Scholastic. Right, they wanted the book Cultivating Genius. They said, oh, this is great, and I had a relationship with them. So then it became a contract.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 28:04

Now people don't talk about their contracts Very privately. I share my contracts with folks, with trusted sisters, because this world is like the music industry and just like Tupac and other people would push out an album like I pushed out that book in one sitting or whatever, they would write these albums because that's what artists do, that's what creative minds do, cause I had to accept that about myself. We are also giving contracts that are very detrimental to our futures and at the end I had. I've seen different contracts that have given to me from that point till today. There are things in the contract that have said, if I die, if I choose not to write a different, if, like, let's say, they wanted two books or two editions, they could find somebody, perhaps a white woman, to write. I'm just saying that they didn't put a white woman in the contract to write the book. But I say that because I write about blackness and black history and if you can get anybody, it could be somebody who doesn't know or experience or live blackness.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 29:12

There were things in the book I mean in contracts that said we own the model, the all that stuff I researched. There are things in the contract that might speak to royalties, that, like nobody has taught us how to in, like R&B in the 90s and stuff. You see people trying to get back their masters Because no one taught any of us. We're just so happy that people are accepting our creative genius that we just won it out in the world and people have different motivations. But I had no motivations to write a book so I did not need a book.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 29:54

If the contract was not right, it would not have gone out. I will give. If you know me, sis, and people who know me, I would give something out for free before I sell my soul. Let somebody take everything I've worked for or not get the kind of the respect, even financially, that I need. So I'm saying all that to say because the contractual process was a whole different level. It was a whole new, something of literacy, of understanding what to do and talking to trusted people, brothers and sisters, that said, oh no, you can negotiate for this. Or if the book sells this many copies, you can ask for this royalties and you can keep. You can have a co-press and have your own publishing together. I mean there's so many different options that people can do.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 30:48

So I'm saying that to say I worked through those things. I educated myself because it wasn't just about writing a book and having a book and putting a book out. But you have to imagine, if that book did so well, would you still be okay with if that book sold 50 copies or 50,000 copies in a year, would you be okay with what you signed? And see, that's the thing I tried to.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 31:19

I had mentors in my life. They got me to see cultivating genius, not for what it is right now, but what it could be Like. They had me imagine in Freedom Dream that this is the book that's gonna change lives. And I'm like we don't know that. I'm thinking that this is just my book. I just put it together. You know, in your mind for your first book you cannot fully see. Some of us cannot fully see who we can become in the world. We have to freedom, dream ourselves like we're gonna be Beyonce or something, and if you can't do it, you need a sister or brother next to you who sees who you are and who you can become in this world, because that's the kind of contract you need to sign, that's so important, wow, okay, you've opened up my eyes too.

Ijeoma Kola: 32:10

I've been digging deep into academic publishing because that's like where I'm the direction I'm going in right now, but you've just like opened my eyes to so much that we don't know about, as you like, professional publishing, trade publishing, really anything besides an academic press that like is not. They have very different operating model. I would like to know, like, where did you find those people who could advise you, port into you? Were they fellow, you know, doctoral scholars? Were there people? Were they people who also wrote books? Were they just like your homies who just gave really really great advice but had that, you know, didn't have experiences authors? How did you cultivate that community of sage advisors?

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 32:56

Well, you know, I've always, you know, since I was a kid when I go into a place, I used to I used to be a little shy but I would pretty much leave with some friends. I rode the bus the other day and I came back with some friends from the bus. So, you know, I'd like to have authentic relationships with people, period, and like get to know people, have them, get, let me make it a reciprocal relationship. But I would out of my relationships. They didn't have to be in academia. One of my strongest mentors for my book contract was a vice president of a Fortune 500 company. See, she knew dollars, she knew contracts. If I knew somebody that knew legal language, I would ask them teach me. You know, and I would always keep my mentors and friendships with people where, where I wanted to be. So, like when I was a high school student, some of my friends, my closest friends, were the student teachers because I wanted to be a teacher when I became a teacher.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 34:08

I had friends who were principals and administrators. That's what I wanted to be, and when I was a doctoral student my friends were assistant professors. So I would build relationships and get to know people and pray for the relationships, because you can't just say be my friend. It has to feel authentic and real. So I would, I would pray for to bring the people in my life who can teach me and who would benefit from me too, so it doesn't feel like one sided. And so a lot of them were people in academia, and black women particularly. So I, who became my best friend, was this woman named Dr Yolanda Seely Ruiz. She's a professor at Columbia Teachers College and she was different. She's my best friend. She's older than me, she's lived in this world longer and she just knows humanity, she knows people, she knows how to navigate academia, all these things.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 35:05

I was so blessed I had her. I didn't even need anybody to advise me. I mean, if anybody knows her, if you have her, you don't need anybody else. Like my husband thinks that is her, is him in the world? In my vows they said you know. The Imam said you know, make sure whatever happens in your marriage it stays between you and your husband and in my mind I said in Yoli and this is the first time I said that out loud, I know I've been thinking that, but you know she's so special to my life so she helped to mentor me and then I was.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 35:41

I saw, when she now she's she went up for tenure and full professor at all that she wrote a poetry book. Now some people say you can't write a poetry book if you're gonna get, unless you're in the English department, if you're going to get full professor or tenure or something. She wrote a poetry book about love, people she's loved in her past. Right, and what I learned from that. So it's the lessons we learned. I'm like, huh, maybe I don't have to. People say you have to publish. You have to write like this and publish with these companies to be solidified, to get tenure and I tenure was never my ultimate goal. My ultimate goal was humanity and being myself. I would see people lose themselves in academia.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 36:29

So for my second book I said, well, I want to write, I want to have poems, I want to have music. I want it. I want it to be a multimodal experience. I want a QR code that links to songs. I wanted to have artwork, children's work. I wanted to have music lyrics printed. I wanted it to feel different. That is not how academics write. I wanted it to be an academic blend of a memoir plus academic writing, plus laughter and jokes in the book.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 37:02

So why am I saying all this? You use the mentorships, you study people and models and you determine who you are. To say what gives you peace, what do you want to put out in the world that speaks to who you are at the end of the day, and what? How can we redefine how to get tenure? Because it cannot just be all these traditional ways that were set by old white men. Right of how they define the academics, right. And what's going to give you peace and joy? That's something we just don't talk about. Like writing these books, giving me joy, because I didn't do it for my department or to get tenure. I did it for myself. I didn't do it for capitalism or how much money I would make. I did it for myself. I did it to help people. So when your intentions are pure, the right people will come into your life and teach you, and that's what happened to me, I believe.

Ijeoma Kola: 37:57

I am getting mentorship right now as I am on my own journey and starting to write and thinking about publishing, so that was incredibly insightful and uplifting. I want to just ask one more question about the new book and then we will start to wrap up. Can you give us a quick summary of how Unearthing Joy expands on cultivating genius? You talked about the multimodal experience, but for folks who are perhaps not familiar with your work or maybe not in the education space and haven't heard about it, can you just let us know how that you are related to one another?

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 38:37

So this is Unearthing Joy and you know I really wanted to feel joyful in the cover and flowers and any blooming, all the things. So in cultivating genius I start off with this history I talked about and at the model that I write about has four different elements teaching and learning, identity development, skill development, intellectualism and criticality, which is social justice. And I said I went back to the literature and I said what about joy? Every we need a joy was a COVID shutdown, everything, all these things were happening. So I went back to the archives, archival literature and the archives and the historical documents, and I said you know this, it needs like another element. And so that became joy. And then, with a new element, came a new book. So I knew the next book was gonna be about joy and again, when my body and mind told me to write, I started writing it.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 39:38

So this is now the follow up to cultivating genius, the how to guide. How do you take the teachings from cultivating genius, with this added pursuit of joy, and teach for these five things in the classroom? So it's very practical, it's very step by step in many ways. It gives templates, examples, lesson plan, pedagogy, curriculum, instruction for parents, for teachers, for administrators, how to lead staff meetings, for these five goals. These five goals are the essence of this book and, like I said, I wanted to feel, like I wanted teachers to see themselves as artists, as people who create and who create pedagogy to teach to children that leaves a legacy at imprint of mark. I'm not for scripted lessons, I'm not for somebody gave me this lesson, let me teach it. I'm for creating something beautiful to teach to our babies Black children, yes, but all children as well, and so that's what this is a guide to. And so, because I talk about joy and the spirit of artistry, that's why I brought in poetry and music and art and primary source documents and all the joyful artistic things and somewhere between cultivating genius and unerthing joy, I got to work with Pharrell Williams. He opened this beautiful school, yellowhab, in his hometown of Virginia Beach, and got a hold of my book and model and asked to meet me and we began to work together with the school. I sit on their advisory board. It's a beautiful school.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 41:19

He has a beautiful mind and he, in many ways, the way he creates music, is how I, what I feel when I create curriculum. His look, how he closes his eyes, how he feels. That's how I feel when I create lesson plans and I said I shared this with him and I asked him to write the foreword for the book because how beautiful it will be. Originally it was a child I thought maybe a child or an artist and I said I asked him, I thought it was a long shot because he's so incredibly busy and in a day he came back and said that he would love and be honored to write it. So it became like a really great piece and his the way he talks about beauty in the world and humanity is zest atone for the entire book. Yeah, and it's all grounded with my favorite artist, who is Stevie Wonder. So Stevie Wonder opens my writing. At the introduction and my closing of it. I use his lyrics to ground what kind of educators we should be in the world.

Ijeoma Kola: 42:29

Yes, for anyone who's listening, who is an educator or who wants to just learn, who's curious, we will definitely be linking how you can get a hold of this book in the show notes. So two last questions before we close out. What is one thing that you would do differently if you had to do your doctoral journey all over again?

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 42:49

Wow, I would probably start reading some of the articles more articles I was reading like professional books and articles, but they were more on the practitioner levels. I would probably read more research articles prior to, because in many ways I struggled a bit my first year. I'm like what?

Ijeoma Kola: 43:12

are they talking about in these articles?

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 43:14

They're so dense and boring. I had to read one article like 25 times. So I would have like started to get more into that research world, like an introduction, maybe going to workshops. But see what's happening now is the students are doing that now. Say, before we didn't have Zoom workshops and doing all that, we didn't know to do it and we didn't have mentors to tell us. Now we're seeing that more often. So that's what I would have hoped.

Ijeoma Kola: 43:39

Thanks, and then final question what is one last piece of advice that you have for prospective or current black women and non-binary doctoral students?

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 43:51

Well, I would just say don't compare yourself to other people. You know, sometimes we're like, oh, I didn't, I should be finished by now. According to who? If it's according to you, that's fine, but if it's according to what other people are doing in your cohort or in your program, you know, really try to understand who you are really and what you want to put in this world. If you had all the funding, all the mentorship and support, what do you want to do? Because you don't know how many times people tell me do not study black girls, do not study black girls. It was when black women that told me that. And black men, why are you studying black girls? They would say. So have some like entitlement about who you are and what you want to study and put out this world and don't let people break you.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 44:43

And finally, I would advise to don't make any of the decisions by yourself. You know every decision, small or large. Talk to a mentor, talk to a trusted friend or somebody who has been through it, cause I some of my students who have graduated, they're in their jobs and they're like I can't believe that happened to me. I said why didn't you come to me before? I would have told you not to do that or to do it this way.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 45:14

Every decision, small or large, give some advisement and, you know, navigate that way, especially if you are in a job where there are no other queer people, lgbtq, there are no other people of color, there are no other but you, and they might be nice and they might, yeah, we love you and so happy you're here, but when it comes down to it, when they get to advocate for you and stand up for you, they might be silent. So everything you do, you know, move with caution, especially in those spaces. Get advisement. If I was late to a meeting, I would call my bestie. I say should I still go in? It's only five minutes left. I had the wrong date and time. Girl, I every decision I would ask her and if she cause she knew she knew what to do, do you walk in five minutes and sit down or do you just skip it? Do they see your face or not? Even as little as something like that, I would ask. So yeah, that would be some of my advice.

Ijeoma Kola: 46:20

That is really really good advice. You've shared such amazing insights into your professional journey. I love the way that you talked about writing as a creation, like a creative endeavor. I haven't really heard anyone who is a professor talk about writing in this way, so that's really moving for me. I love how you approach your work and how you're really redefining what it means to be an academic, what it means to be a scholar, not just for the people in your field and your discipline, but for everyone, for folks like me who are not in your discipline but are still trying to do things in our own special way. So thank you for being an inspiration and thank you so much for joining us today on the Co-Horror Sisters podcast.

Gholnecsar Muhammad: 47:02

Thank you so much. We'll all be where we're supposed to be, and I'm so glad I was with you today. Okay so.

Ijeoma Kola: 47:20

Thank you again for listening to this week's episode of the Co-Horror Sisters podcast. If you are a black woman interested in joining the Co-Horror Sisters membership community or you're looking for more information on how to support or partner with Co-Horror Sisters, please visit our website at wwwcohorsisterscom. You can also find us on all social media platforms at cohort sisters. Don't forget to subscribe to the Co-Horror Sisters podcast and leave us a quick review wherever you're listening. Thank you so much for joining us this week and we'll catch you in next week's episode. Hmmm,