Thursday, October 11, 2012

Saving the African American Child--Part II


Part II –Saving the African American Child: Setting the Context

The African American Summit on the Black Child is another opportunity to stop the genocide and follow the path to empowering the minds, hearts and visions of our young people.  As Dr. Nobles brings his formative work to the table focusing on “Humanity, Cultural and Education: Our Need for an Authentic Pedagogy and Process of Excellence-- The Nsaka Sunsum,” he compels us to seek excellence for ourselves as educators and deliver it into the circles and communities of learning.

As an educator some of the proudest moments you’ll ever have will be overriding the pathology and defying the data related to educating and graduating the African American child.  As our future doctors, educators, world leaders, and intergalactic explorers, one day you may well hear your name called out in tribute when they say, “You taught me into my calling.”

Some of the goals of the ACOE team related to this summit include:
  • Delving more deeply into the goals of Educating the Whole Child
  • Moving away from a deficit model of teaching the African America Child into models and paradigms that resonates more towards the intellectual and skill-driven assets
  • Examining the perspectives of speakers and participants to interface with, inform and support the efforts and perspectives of the ACOE team for students in ACOE schools, especially (but not exclusively) as it relates to public health
  • Recasting the term "school" into another concept/word to provide a more positive connotation of where structured education and learning take place
  • Moving deeper into the exploration of Social-Emotional Learning
  • Translating actionable items into pedagogical practices
  • Expanding the perspective of educating students with more attention towards other national and global paradigms
  • Surveying and engaging in discourse with African American graduates to ascertain what worked and did not work for them


About the Author
Daphne Muse blogs for the Alameda County Office of Education and is a writer and educational consultant.  She written and developed curriculum for the Commission on Education for Major League Baseball, Scholastic, Inc. and school districts across the country.  Muse also spent more than thirty years teaching at UC Berkeley and Mills College.  The author of four books, her commentaries and articles have aired on NPR and have been published in the Washington Post, San Jose Mercury, Congressional Record and the Journal of Ethnic Studies.

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