EMILY STILLMAN
The Question: How do I cultivate joyful learning in my classroom?
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“Joy is the ultimate goal of teaching and learning, not test prep or graduation." - Gholdy Muhammad
This inquiry is not a deep dive into state test scores or student performance rankings. Instead, I will be exploring joy as a teaching and learning goal, exploring why and how joy fuels both academic and socio-emotional success in our students in the classroom and beyond.
I came to this question through frequent observations of my classroom, conversations with staff and students, academic research, and certainly my own curiosity and eagerness to promote joy through learning in my classroom. I worked with two classes of fifth graders, our morning homeroom and our afternoon class. I wondered how to increase engagement, and perhaps joy, in the classroom, particularly curious about students' expressed lack of interest and enthusiasm for the subject matter.
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In “Unearthing Joy” Gholdy Muhammad writes about the effects of the pandemic on our students. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, many individuals and organizations promoted the language of ‘learning loss.’ … Yet no one spoke of ‘joy loss.’ No one spoke of how joy is at the center of how we move in the world of education and why we return to school each day” (33).
Notably, my students, who were in 2nd grade in March 2020, have dealt with a lot of uncertainty and disruption in their education. In a neighborhood, district and school that were already systematically under-resourced and disproportionately affected by poverty and violence, it is difficult to measure the impact that the pandemic and virtual learning had on their educational development. Muhammad, quoted above, addresses the learning loss that is often discussed by educators in the aftermath of the pandemic. She brings up, importantly, the potential for “joy loss” for our students, teachers and communities as a result of school closures and disruptions.
Coming into the classroom, my perception of joy in learning was undoubtedly influenced by my own experiences and positionalities as a learner. This inquiry is not a definitive analysis of joy in the classroom, nor is it a judgment or labeling of the joy of my students and their communities. This is, however, a critical look into how joyful learning can be cultivated through our choices and methods of instruction in the classroom and why that is important. It is an inquiry into the pursuit of joy in classroom that can arise through creating authentic sense of purpose and self expression.
The Context
This year I student-taught in a fifth grade English Language Arts class at Richard R. Wright Elementary School in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood of Philadelphia. As a newcomer to Philadelphia, I did not know much, nor have many expectations, about the school district, neighborhood and school that I would be placed in. My previous experience working for City Year in a Detroit public school, with fourth graders, prepared me for some unique challenges of working in an urban school, and taught me the importance of relationship building when it comes to student learning. At Wright, I work with an experienced classroom mentor who has taught for over 20 years.
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It is crucial to explore my own positionality and privilege as a white woman from outside of Philadelphia entering a predominantly Black neighborhood and school. I am consistently working toward developing socially just, equity-centered education practices. Muhammad defines equity as "teaching and learning that is centered on justice, liberation, truth, and freedom, and is free of bias and favoritism (33)." With this definition of equity in mind, I am working to unpack my own biases and understand more deeply my responsibilities and roles as an educator. While the focus of my inquiry is joy, Muhammad writes that "joy cannot be embraced fully if oppression is present" (71). This means that, in order to cultivate joy in the classroom, I must also work devotedly to dismantle oppressive systems in our schools and society. Relatedly, Criticality is of the utmost important in our education system: both developing my criticality as an educator and helping my students develop as critical thinkers.
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With these concepts in mind, I crafted an inclusive vision statement for my future classroom. This vision statement is a work in progress, a living document that will continue to evolve as I grow and change as an educator. United with equity, joy is a crucial element of my vision.
Artifact 1: Inclusive Vision Statement
The Framework
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Throughout this year, my instruction in classes and practice in the classroom have revolved heavily around Gholdy Muhammad’s pursuits for Culturally and Historically Responsive Education. I was introduced to Gholdy Muhammad’s framework for Historically Responsive Literacy in her book “Cultivating Genius.” Muhammad explores the history and contemporary model of culturally relevant education, defined by Gloria Ladson-Billings as a “theoretical model that not only addresses student achievement, but also helps students to accept and affirm their cultural identity while developing critical perspectives that challenge inequities that schools (and other institutions) perpetuate” (1995, p. 469). Focusing primarily on the experience of Black children in schools, Muhammad examines the current need for an urgent pedagogy shift in our schools away from systems that marginalize and harm students of color: "Joy of people of color is such an urgent pursuit because of efforts to erase it in schools” (71).
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Muhammad’s Historically Responsive Framework is broken into five pursuits:
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For the purposes of this inquiry, I will focus on the fifth pursuit, Joy, which was explored more deeply in Muhammad’s latest publication “Unearthing Joy” (2023). Muhammad focuses largely on what it means to “cultivate genius” in students based on ways of teaching and learning that are “grounded and responsive to the histories, identities, literacies and liberation of children and the social world” (14).
Muhammad defines joy as the following: “Joy is not a fleeting feeling of happiness, but a sustained sense of fulfillment and self-determination, self-liberation, and self-empowerment” (100).
As I discuss joy in this inquiry, I will refer back to this definition as a foundation for what joy may look like in my present and future classroom.
My inquiry will continuously connect to methods of teaching and learning that lead students toward joy as defined by Muhammad. In synthesizing and analyzing my own classroom artifacts within this framework, I will explore the cultivation of joy in my classroom in two parts.
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Artifact 2: Muhammad's Five Pursuits
Help students establish a sense of purpose
Provide opportunities for self expression