Author-Educator-Activist to Lead ‘Black Minds Matter'
The public is invited to join a free online class starting tomorrow (Thursday, October 21) that will focus on improving educational outcomes for African American students as well as schools and classes for all students.
Photo courtesy of LaLa B Photo
The free educational series entitled “Black Minds Matter” will run from this month to December and is sponsored by the Castro Valley Unified School District. Students, parents and the public are invited to attend. This is the fourth year the district has offered the course in the Castro Valley community. The difference this year is that noted author, educator, and activist Tyson Amir is bringing his fresh ideas, expertise, and current research to this year’s course.
“This course is valuable if you are interested and open to challenging yourself to see the institution of education in a different way,” Amir told the Forum. “There will be people who show up who are committed to improving what we offer as education to students and that is a great and lofty goal to have. But another piece is that we must confront the history and present moments that we are in and allow people to grow.”
The original curriculum, which was provided by Cal State University, Long Beach professor Luke Wood, provided a framework for a collective group of teachers, administrators, and parents to learn from text, videos, and open discussions. The strategies and perspectives taught are designed to be a starting point that the so-called cohort can then build on and implement into the community, according to CVUSD Assistant Superintendent Jason Reimann
“With each group that has completed the course, we have found that the conversations and collective learning is among the most important outcomes,” Reimann said, “Each group that has completed the course together grew together through the process and became a learning cohort that developed by the shared experience and learning.”
Amir is a notable author of “Black Boy Poems,” which he converted into an educational curriculum for schools. He is also a noted activist, rapper, and poet. Amir said he participated in one of the sessions a few years back and was impressed by the caliber of the content as well as the commitment by the Castro Valley community.
“I was not familiar with Castro Valle and their Black Minds Matter program,” Amir said. “It was exciting to see because I work with many districts around the Bay Area, where I provide professional development and contribute to curricula on how to make important institutional systemic changes for the disenfranchised. Some districts are doing innovative things. I would consider Castro Valley in that group.”
Amir says he expects to guide the cohort with a mixture of history and cultural approaches to education including detailing how colonial systems have monopolized the perspectives of equity and how to overcome any misconceptions about its importance and how to move forward.
“We have to deal with that system that has disenfranchised people for centuries so that those people are included in an equitable way. To go through that we have to explore those artifacts.”
The course will be a series of six sessions on Zoom from the end of October through December. You can sign up here: https://bit.ly/3myj1K8