“Trying to Make a Dollar Out of 15 Cents”: An Asset-Rooted Method for (Re)Envisioning and (Re)Constructing English Language Arts Curricula

• In Event: Dismantling Conclusive Blackness: Countering the Deterministic Role That Assessment Plays in K–12 Education

Abstract

Black authors are intentional about employing Black Language in their prose as they know it to be an authentic shaper of Black characters--an invaluable tool to tell a good, Black story in a way that Black Language natives can find refuge-like familiarity. However, this Black literary genius is seldom explicitly nor widely afforded the recognition of its inherent cultural wealth in ELA classrooms. The classic culturally relevant reading theory, Windows, Mirrors, and Sliding Doors (Bishop, 1990), reminds us that Black children need to see themselves in literature, first, to be affirmed, and then, to gain inspiration to explore the worlds of others. A normalized reality, however, is when Black children arrive to formal schooling, they are submerged in the worlds of others and seldom find themselves reflected in requisite stories. Even when they are represented, mere inclusion is not enough. Black children deserve to affectionately dwell in the familiarity of their native language of nurture and navigation, particularly while studying language arts. They deserve to hear their language named notably, rather than talked about as a habit they must compromise to faux-fit into equations of Whiteness. This paper examines the promise that can be realized when the gaze within formative assessment is shifted away from student mastery and instead points toward a new type of data that must be gathered when making evidence-informed decisions about instructional aims.
As an educator’s practice moves toward this end, the guiding frameworks and tools that allow for instructional decision-making must also be built with intention, harnessing the need for the disruption of harmful pedagogical practices and anti-Black linguistic violence (Baker-Bell, 2020), while simultaneously producing a pathway for Black linguistic capital to be multiplied in their learning spaces. This dual charge must also be built into the underlying measurement structure of those assessment tools—providing the ability for reflexive praxis. This paper chronicles the creation and implementation of a heuristic and accompanying rubric for a multi-phase process that guided Black Women Teachers (BWT) in critically confronting and reimagining curricula materials that featured African American authors. Framed by principles of Anti-Racist Language Pedagogy (Baker-Bell, 2020), this tool unapologetically prioritized the academic esteem and wellness of Black learners by explicitly namings and highlighting the lingusitic, literacy, and literary traditions of Black Language that Black authors employ to deliberately depict Black ways of knowing, being, and belonging. Using examples from this process, we will chronicle not only the purposeful design of the rubric, including the item content, structure, and careful deployment; but we will also share how BWTs became transformative intellectuals (Giroux, 1988) and arbiters of Black Linguistic justice (Lee, 2020) as they identified strengths and missed opportunities of curricularized texts while finding ways to amplify rigor and relevance. This resulted in three main assessment and curricular reenvisionings: writing supplemental questions, locating authentic text pairings, and redesigning literacy activities. This endeavor enacted a process in making promissory investments in Black learners’ lives; that is, paying back what Ladson-Billings (2006) keenly describes as the “educational debt” that is owed to Black children in U.S. schooling.

Author

• Teaira C. McMurtry, University of Alabama - Birmingham