“We have to do better”… That’s Dr. Almitra Berry’s heart-felt answer when asked about educating children from diverse cultural and language backgrounds.
Dr. Berry has a strong message for educators and school system leaders who don’t understand that cultural differences can profoundly affect the quality of education these children experience…
“You have children with failing test scores. You have teachers who want to teach but aren’t given the freedom or allowed to use the tools and strategies they need. You have teachers leaving the profession in droves.
And you have tax-paying parents who are very dissatisfied with their children’s education but don’t know how to effect change.”
In other words, our education system has a crisis on its hands. And this crisis affects all of us, not just teachers and those in the educational establishment.
It’s a crisis we must address if we’re going to have an exceptional nation with school systems free of systemic oppression.
We need to take it to heart. We need to act on Dr. Berry’s message. It’s a message she’s deeply passionate about.
As an educator, speaker, and author, she focuses on the education of the most historically marginalized: culturally and linguistically diverse learners.
She has worked diligently for over 30 years to help marginalized learners, learners of color, of linguistic and cultural diversity in low-wealth urban school districts, experience higher academic achievements.
Dr. Berry is on a mission. A mission bigger than herself. A mission to change the conversation happening around the topics of education, equity, and intellectual emancipation for culturally and linguistically diverse learners.
But she can’t do it alone. So she’s looking for leaders to join her. Is that you?
If you’re nodding your head and saying “Yes!” as you read this, we invite you to subscribe and listen to The Educational Equity, Emancipation Podcast.
This episode explores the cultural celebration of Kwanzaa and how its principles can be incorporated into educational settings to create more inclusive and culturally responsive learning environments. The host discusses the history and significance of Kwanzaa, its seven core principles, and provides practical strategies for teachers to bring Kwanzaa into their classrooms through cultural learning centers, project-based learning units, and community outreach. The episode emphasizes the importance of cultural education as an ongoing priority for shaping a more understanding and unified future generation.
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Welcome back, equity warriors, thanks for tuning in to another episode of the 3e podcast, and a shout out to our new members on the Patreon channel. Thanks for joining and for everyone else, make sure that you smash that subscribe button and share like it too. Your subscriptions are what help grow the channel, and just that one little action of pushing a share or a like or subscribing helps the algorithm in some manner that I don't truly understand. But anyhow, back in episode 125 we looked at all the holidays of December. Today, I want to dive a little deeper into one that's celebrated by my own culture, and that's Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa is a transformative week long celebration that begins next week on december 26 and then continues until January 1. It's a seven day festival that really beautifully weaves together black American culture rooted in our African heritage and community spirit in ways that can profoundly impact our educational spaces. So as we explored that rich tradition today, I want you to think about discovering how its principles can really revolutionize our approach to inclusive education and community building. So as educators in and advocates for K 12 public schools, we have an extraordinary opportunity to harness kwanzas principles for creating more inclusive and culturally responsive learning environments. Kwanzaa isn't just about historical recognition, it's about embedding fundamental values that resonate with students from all backgrounds. And while you're likely on winter break right now and enjoying a little time away from lesson planning, I want to plant a seed for the second half of your school year that will have you thinking about your week long range plans for next year. It was Dr Moana coinga, a professor of African Studies who developed Kwanzaa in 1966 during the Civil Rights Movement, pretty turbulent times, and just in the aftermath of the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles. Now you might remember that it was Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, who said that a riot is a language of the unheard. So think about everything that was going on in California and around the United States at the time. Now, Dr Karenga his his vision wasn't just to create a holiday. He had some motivations. There were three of them. The first was cultural recognition, and that idea was to to help black American families reconnect with their African roots and their community as a whole, to provide a way for black Americans to celebrate themselves and their history and to reaffirm black roots in African culture so much that had been removed or attempted to be removed, in a cultural whitewashing in this country. So cultural recognition was number one. The second motivation for Dr Karenga was community building. He wanted to bring black Americans together as a community. There was a lot of social unrest in the 1960s and so bringing us back together was big for him. So Kwanzaa was designed to serve as a communal celebration that would reinforce the bonds between black people and to instill a sense of pride, of identity, purpose and direction. So community building. And then the third of course, he was professor. That meant it had have an educational purpose. Specifically, he wanted to create Kwanzaa as an educational tool. So this required several years of linguistic, historical, cultural and philosophical Africana Studies Research. Now, I will say right now that I am challenged to pronounce the properly pronounce some of the words as we talk about Kwanzaa. I have not had that linguistic study and research, but the creation is itself in a whole was inspired by a lot of African harvest festival traditions. So Kwanzaa, the name itself, comes from a Swahili phrase, matunda yakuanza, meaning first fruits. Now Kwanzaa is filled with two A's. The phrase, the Swahili phrase matunda yakuanza only has one a. I'll tell you why in a minute. So first fruits, Dr Karenga designed this holiday to celebrate what he identified as the seven fundamental principles that would help build and sustain community among black Americans. Over the years, Kwanzaa has evolved from its original conception as an alternative to Christmas to become a cultural celebration. That can be observed right alongside all the other holidays of December, allowing black folks of all faiths to participate in a celebration of heritage and community. But let's look a little deeper into this tapestry that is Kwanzaa and its educational significance. The name itself. Kwanzaa carries profound meaning. It derives from that Swahili phrase, matuda ya Kwanzaa, first fruits. But the extra a in Kwanzaa, as we recognize it here, was added to create seven letters to match the seven principles. Pretty clever, huh. So seven core principles. This is what the whole celebration centers around, that are known as, and again, working on my pronunciation here, gunzo, Saba. The first is Umoja, which means unity. It's about building unity and our faith, our community, our nation and our race as black people of African heritage, so Umoja the first day, the second is self determination. Here's my attempt at pronunciation, kujicha Gulia. Kuji kaulia, defining naming and speaking for ourselves, self determination. The third principle is Ujima, which is about collective work and responsibility. That's the the translation collective work and responsibility, building and maintaining our black community together. And the fourth principle is ujama, which is cooperative econ economics. So building and supporting our own businesses. You'll hear some people say, buy black right to build and support our own businesses within our communities. The fifth principle is Nia, which means purpose, and that's about developing that community purposefully. Number six is Kumba, or which means creativity, and that's making our community better and more beautiful. And then the seventh principle is Imani, which translates to faith and believing in our future, having faith in our people and our future. Now each of these principles are symbolized through some powerful artifacts. Not each the Kwanzaa as a whole, sorry, the seven principles are symbolized through some powerful artifacts. If you've ever seen a Kwanzaa display, you'll know that there is a candle holder called a Canara. The Canara holds seven candles which represent the seven principles. Underneath the Canara is a map, a mat, which is pronounced Geka, symbolizing our historical foundation. As part of Kwanzaa, we are putting down some crops, mazao, that represent the harvest bounty. You'll often see Kwanzaa displays that may have an ear of corn or seeds or fruit. Of course, you're going to see corn really important. The corn Mundi symbolizes children and our future generations. You think about what an ear of corn looks like those future generations. And then finally, there's a Unity Cup called kukumbecha Umoja, which facilitates the ceremonial sharing. Now think about your classroom and educational context. Each one of those principles offers unique opportunities for student engagement and learning. For instance, Umoja can guide your classroom community building. You've heard me talk a lot about classroom culture, or read my works about classroom culture, while the principal of Coumba can inspire creative projects and problem solving activities. So of course, I want to give you some practical ways that you can do this in your classroom. Remember, this is not about religion, it is about understanding and learning about various cultures. So cultural diversity. So three ways that you can incorporate Kwanzaa into your classroom, and you can find resource links to detailed lesson plans, some printable materials and some additional resources for each of these strategies on my Patreon page, and you know already there's a link for that down in the notes. So first you can create cultural learning centers. Design a special area of your classroom, a little tiny corner. It doesn't need to be much with books, artifacts, interactive materials, about Kwanzaa. And of course, that can change over the course of the year. See where I'm going here. Start planning early. Make sure you have some age appropriate resources, like K is for Kwanzaa and my first Kwanzaa. Rotate those displays to highlight each principle. Now you won't be in the classroom during Kwanzaa, but you can study it at another time. Of the year. So think about that. Add some multimedia elements, documentaries, music that kids can listen to on their headphones, maybe on their own devices, or on a laptop or desktop computer that's in that area. And if you can think about setting up some interactive stations where students can explore Kwanzaa symbols. And I know every time I give folks some things they can do in the classroom, somebody says we have so much to do already. And I know that. I know that, but we also have to provide some balance for our children, so it's not constantly hammering them with content, content, content, because things like this can spark their own creativity and imagination and help them make some connections. All right. Second thing you can do is to develop some project based learning units. Think about guiding your students in researching and presenting different aspects of Kwanzaa. Encourage their creative expression through art music, digital presentations, loop your arts and music teachers into this if they're not already listening to this podcast, and if you're an art or music teacher who's listening, this is something that you may be able to do in your classroom that the content area teachers cannot. So partner up and work together organize some classroom celebrations, incorporate those traditional elements and then create some collaborative projects that demonstrate each principle. Of course, when we're talking about project based learning units, I would be remiss if I didn't say to design these cross curricularly right connect Kwanzaa to various subjects. You have linguistics or language. You can do spelling. So there's your ELA in there with some reading, listening to to music and whatnot that celebrate the culture. There's some art in there that you can do and use. And of course, there's social studies. All right, so cross curriculum, project based learning units, and then think about this year round. Use the NGOs osaba as monthly themes throughout the year. Create some service learning projects that are aligned with each principle. There are character education lessons that either exist online already. Again, I'm going to put some links down in the links down in the notes, or that you can create yourself that are based on those seven principles. Again, think about this for character, education, collective work, cooperative economics, faith, well, can't talk about faith in the classroom, creativity, unity, self determination, right? All of those things have something to do with character. So we can create some character lessons based on the seven principles. And then, what about community outreach? Right reflecting those quantum valid values, who's in your community that you can bring into your classroom to discuss this? Or what are some service projects that your kids can do in terms of community, where they can go out and support their community. And of course, when you design the assessment tools, make sure that they're incorporating some cultural awareness. Cultural education should be a year round priority. So if you're already at this, or you're planning to, or you just want to connect to a community that's doing that. Share your Kwanzaa teaching experiences on the Patreon page with this podcast episode, and if you're not there already, join our educator community. We're constantly sharing strategies for cultural education together, we can create some more inclusive and understanding learning environments. Think about as part of this community, documenting and sharing your classrooms, Kwanzaa celebrations. My Patreon page is still young. I would love to see images that you share connect with other educators who are implementing cultural education, and then think about professional development workshops on cultural competency. I do have some on my Patreon page. You can take those at your leisure. And in April, in April, we have a firm publication date. You can purchase my book, The culturally competent educator. Stay tuned for more details. As soon as I have a pre order link, I will get that posted, create and share resources with fellow educators, like I said, and build some partnerships with those community organizations. Think about how these things can transform your classroom. Maybe you can start small, one principle or one project. I may have said this before. I know that I've written it, that the path to cultural competency and inclusive. Education is ongoing, but every single step matters. Your role as an educator goes way beyond teaching content. You are changing lives, helping to shape a more understanding and unified future generation. Remember. Over the principles of Kwanzaa aren't just for December. They're valuable tools for year round community building, character development and cultural understanding. So let's do this together, supporting each other as we create more inclusive and enriching educational experiences for all of our children. And then join me again next episode. If you've got a question, if you have a topic you'd like covered, if you have a special request, text it to me, look down in the notes for the link. I want to hear your stories, and remember, don't worry about things you cannot change. Change the things you can no longer accept. Happy Kwanzaa. You
