My Hood Is My Curriculum

• In Event: Affirmative Development: Civic Engagement Ontologies of Hope and Action

Abstract

For too long, school has been a site of cultural erasure for Black students, perpetuating hierarchies of knowledge rooted in white coloniality. However, a true education does not force an archaic curriculum onto the classroom, but forges curriculum out of culture, time, and space, cutting across all disciplines to ground student knowledge in their own interests and assets. Under the theme, "my hood is my curriculum," I assert that learning settings and activities must reflect the cultural and socio-political ecologies that saturate student lives as powerful sources of knowledge.

Author

• Jamila Lyiscott, University of Massachusetts - Amherst