Gholdy Muhammad Professional Development

Dr. Gholdy Muhammad has fundamentally reshaped how educators think about culturally responsive teaching through her groundbreaking Historically Responsive Literacy framework and the HILL model — an acronym for Histories, Identities, Literacies, and Liberation. As an Associate Professor at Georgia State University and founder of HILL Pedagogies, Muhammad draws on her research into 19th-century Black literary societies to demonstrate that the most powerful teaching has always centred identity, intellectual development, criticality, and skills simultaneously rather than treating them as competing priorities. Her bestselling books Cultivating Genius and Unearthing Joy provide educators with a practical five-pursuit framework — Identity, Skills, Intellect, Criticality, and Joy — that can be applied across every subject area and grade level to create instruction that is both rigorous and deeply affirming. Muhammad's professional development sessions are known for their intellectual depth and transformative impact, challenging participants to examine not just their instructional methods but their underlying beliefs about what students are capable of and what constitutes meaningful education. Her framework has been adopted by thousands of schools and districts across the United States and Canada, making it one of the most influential equity models in contemporary education. For educators seeking to move beyond surface-level cultural responsiveness toward instruction that genuinely honours students' histories while developing their capacity to analyse and transform the world around them, Muhammad's work provides both the vision and the tools.