About The blackgirlPOD
The blackgirlPOD is a hybrid community designed to nurture the joy and genius of Blackgirls through high-quality curriculum and instruction, equity-centered professional development and caregiver support that centers their needs, affirms their identities, and leverages their history as a linchpin for individual and collective academic and social development. Drawing on theory, scholarship and best-practices, The blackgirlPOD brings together a village of scholars, educators and families committed to raising Blackgirls who understand their historical legacy, recognize the power and purpose of their individual and collective voices, and can effectively read, write, collaborate and create to transform the world they inhabit.
Why a blackgirlPOD?
Systems of racism, sexism, and classism intersect in ways that uniquely affect Black girls' experiences in school and society. Studies centering Black girls voices continue to show how encounters of individual and structural racism have a sizable impact on our girls and the ways they engage with subject-matter content, perceive themselves and their voices as valued and valuable in schools, and how they imagine possibilities for who they are and who they can become in society.
Studies show that positive racial identity development, and historical knowledge of the lives and legacies of Black women in history buffers the effects of individual and structural racism in curriculum and instruction for Black girls navigating public, private and independent schooling.
The blackgirlPOD works to counter experiences of alienation, underperformance, and loss in confidence - to provide needed and ongoing support, sisterhood and high-quality Blackgirlcentric curriculum and instruction to nurture the joy and genius our girls bring to the world.
About our PODLeader
Heather Hill, Ph.D.
Founder/CEO
Dr. Heather Hill serves as an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology in College of Education and Human Ecology at Cleveland State University. In this role she teaches courses in learning and development theory and the social, cultural and psychological foundations of education. Through curriculum that centers the scholarship of Black and Brown researchers and examines the intersectional influences of race, class and gender in schooling, she facilitates critical dialogue and community building that develops teachers for equity-centered teaching, leading, and social action. Her approach to teaching emerges from lessons learned through research with Black girls reading and writing across urban public language arts classrooms and digital reading and writing environments. Her research highlights the historical and sociopolitical aspects of literacy education and points to possibilities for contexts of schooling to serve as spaces and places for empowerment, community building, critical consciousness raising, and academic achievement for and among youth generally, and Black girls in particular.