A happy class is a rigorous class.
A rigorous class is a joyful class.
I wrote this mantra on a sticky note and placed it on my desk as a daily reminder that my students’ right to access joy is as important as academic rigor. During my third year of teaching, I struggled to imagine what rigorous learning without joy looks, sounds, and feels like. I had to ask myself: What is rigor? Why do we sacrifice joy for rigor in our classrooms? More urgently, why was I so anxious for my black students to experience this joy in the classroom? We live in a racialized society that shapes our thoughts, practices and behaviors. None of us are exempt from the power of this influence and internalization. That is why our work to unlearn and relearn is important.
My experience in the classroom has taught me that educators working with diverse student populations must question our thought processes and internalized biases to transform learning environments from spaces of compliance to spaces of joy. In my classes, radical black joy Not only did it sustain us in our learning, but it became necessary to create liberating spaces for students and transform relationships within the school community.
Cultivating a culture
One day during my English class, Khalil, one of my sixth grade students, created a live soundtrack to accompany my lesson on mentor prayers. His musical equipment? Two pencils and a desk that he used as drumsticks and a drum:
Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh
Touch-touch-touch
Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh
Touch-touch-touch
Don’t get me wrong, I love music. I grew up in a house where music was blaring from our living room speakers; Our ancestors danced inside picture frames as the rhythms reverberated off the walls of our homes. Despite my love for music, I thought, there’s a time and a place, right? Several questions ran through my head as I thought about how to respond: Did I have to do this while an administrator was watching me? How do I regain control? Give a notice? Remove the pencils? Redirect it? Of course, all eyes in the classroom were on me, anticipating how I would respond. I took a deep breath, preparing for the power struggle I expected to occur:
“Khalil, if you’re going to drop a beat, at least make a better one so I can drop a verse.”
“Ooooooh,” my twenty-eight students roared in unison.
“Well, I got you,” Khalil smiled, accepting the challenge. Even Devon, despite how quiet and shy he was, raised his head to watch the action.
“After we finish this lesson on mentor prayer and all of you share the edits in pairs,” I emphasized, setting the conditions.
“Bet!” the classroom agreed.
The students eagerly began working together to complete their assignments while I visited students who needed more support. I was pretty sure the administrator sitting in the back of the room felt like I had surrendered to the chaos. A rigorous class is a busy class, but being busy can also be joyful.
My student taught me the power of Radical Black Joy and how it can be used to boost belonging and learning achievement in a community. Similarly, Sequoia Thompson and Eric Rey of Southern California Donors said that “Radical Black Joy means coming together to elevate what has historically been rejected. To return to the collective happiness that white supremacy insidiously corrupted to separate us from each other and from ourselves.”
As educators, we must ask ourselves what we can do within our capacity to co-create a cultural landscape that decentres the white gaze and allows for the full breadth of human experience. How do we achieve this? We allow students to co-create a space that prioritizes their joy as intensely as academic rigor.
Creating a song
In the summer of 2017, rapper Cardi B released the Diamond-certified single, “Yellow Wedding”, and my students couldn’t get enough of it. The song activated his inner joy and confidence, so I took this opportunity to establish our English language arts anthem, “Bodak Goals”:
He said I have big plans
So I make important moves (Look)
I have big plans
that’s why I come to school
I have dreams so I work very hard
To make them come true
you have dreams
What are you waiting for?
We have work to do (ayyye)
We played this song daily, sometimes in the lunchroom, at the beginning of class, standing on chairs, and even at school assemblies. We all set reading goals, myself included, and work rigorously to fully achieve them. We measure our reading performance using the Northwest Assessment Association (NWEA) Evaluation of Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), which uses Common Core standards to measure what students know and how they grow in math and reading. After taking the assessment, our class report revealed that we had achieved almost two years of growth in reading. The combination of our classroom culture and achievement of reading growth earned our class the 2018 Classroom of the Year award from Southwest Ohio Teach For America. More importantly, radical black joy brought an air of magic to our classroom that was uniquely ours to hold and nurture.
Building a movement
We live in a society that chronicles the black experience with struggle, conflict, and death. Radical Black Joy gives students the opportunity to witness the full extent of humanity and the Black community. In the summer of 2020, my students not only witnessed a catastrophic pandemic that uprooted their sense of normalcy, but they also witnessed the power of the Black Lives Matter Movement right after the murder of george floyd.
With so much uncertainty and sadness in the world, how could I center Black Radical Joy in my classroom, particularly with the looming concern of learning loss What consumed the educational community? The short answer: we dance. As administrators, educators, parents, and students, we find joy in our bodies. For Black History Month, students were not allowed into the school building due to public health guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Consequently, the Classic of black culture was born at DECA Middle in which staff members performed songs by Black artists who have brought joy to the world.
Despite not being able to gather in person, we share this joy with our school community through social media and invite you to use dance to capture your own joy in the midst of chaotic and uncertain times. It’s no surprise that Franky Beverly and Maze’s “Before I let it go” accompanied our electric slide dance in the school parking lot when we launched our first district-wide Juneteenth celebration that same year. The students danced alongside the parents who danced alongside the teachers who danced alongside the senators. This one was black. This was radical. This was joy.
A classroom that centers joy is a classroom that centers leadership, culture, and academics. Radical Black Joy sustains us in a society created to restrict our humanity and limit our lived experiences. Even though I was the teacher, my students taught me to give in to joy on our own terms, without permission or apology. We don’t always have to do work before we can access joy. Joy is not something we must earn but something we can hold on to, regardless of our external conditions. While many social conditions threaten the well-being and culture of our classrooms, we must create opportunities to experience authentic joy. This is where students come to life and engagement flourishes. I challenge all stakeholders to reimagine what learning looks and feels like. The learning experience of our Black students depends on it.
