Course Description

This comprehensive book study is designed to help educators deeply engage with Gholdy Muhammad's transformative work on joyful, anti-oppressive learning. Each two-hour Zoom session balances reading discussion, collaborative exploration, and practical application to ensure participants can immediately implement joy-centered practices in their classrooms and schools.

Course Objectives

* Understand the Four Dimensions of Joy: Participants will identify and explain joy as wellness, beauty, healing, and justice, and articulate how each dimension connects to culturally and historically responsive education. This foundational understanding helps educators see joy not as frivolous, but as essential to equity and student thriving.

* Explore Historical and Cultural Contexts: Participants will examine how Black literary societies and historical communities of color centered joy despite oppression, and connect these practices to contemporary teaching. This historical grounding provides both inspiration and evidence for why joy matters in education today.

* Increase Student Engagement Through Joy-Centered Practices: Participants will analyze current student engagement patterns in their classrooms, identify where disengagement may signal a lack of joy or cultural responsiveness, and implement at least two joy-centered strategies that increase authentic student participation, voice, and ownership of learning. Educators will collect evidence of engagement shifts through observation, student feedback, or work samples, and share findings with the book study community.

* Design Joy-Centered Learning Experiences: Participants will create or revise at least one lesson, unit, or classroom practice that intentionally integrates one or more dimensions of joy. This moves the book study from theory to action, ensuring educators leave with tangible changes to implement.

* Cultivate Personal Joy Practices and Build Collaborative Commitments: Participants will develop and commit to personal wellness and joy practices that sustain them as educators. Recognizing that teachers cannot pour from empty cups, this objective prioritizes educator well-being as foundational to student joy.

* Engage in Critical Self-Reflection: Participants will examine their own beliefs about joy, rigor, and student success, and identify where deficit thinking or joyless practices may have taken root. This vulnerable work requires trust and community support, making the book study format ideal. Participants will work together to identify schoolwide or team-based actions that center joy and justice for all students, particularly those who have been historically marginalized. Collective commitments amplify individual efforts and create systemic change.