Black Girls Stay Lit™ brings culturally-sustaining educational theory and practice together to create customized, engaging, equitable literacy instruction for Black Girls. BGSL’s exceptional curriculum, programming, climate, policies and procedures all align under our exclusive Liberatory Literacy Framework, which incorporates the following recursive (each part depends on the application of the whole) foundational elements:

Asset-Based Approach Black Girls Stay Lit™ acknowledges and incorporates the assets that our girls already bring to the learning space via their personal lived experiences, families, historical legacies, and cultural wealth. This approach, of recognizing that each student learns in culturally influenced ways and that each instructor’s teaching is equally influenced by her/his background and experiences, contrasts with the more common deficit-based approach to teaching, in which members of Black communities are “characterized by their problems, weaknesses, and needs.” By intentionally building on strengths our girls already possess, Black Girls Stay Lit™ seeks to create lifelong learners who are confident in their abilities to master new skills. We hold, and express to our girls, high expectations that they will flourish in BGSL’s atmosphere of genuine respect, empathy and belief in their innate capabilities. Our girls learn that their lived experiences, historical legacies, culture, race, and gender are assets that add value not only to Black Girls Stay Lit™ but also to the classrooms, workspaces and social spaces they may occupy.

Culturally Sustaining Materials and Methods Black Girls Stay Lit™’s recognition that students learn in culturally influenced ways means that we use culturally responsive materials and culturally sustaining methods to fuel our innovative programming. Study after study has shown that Black students are likely to be more engaged and perform better in school when their identities and histories are affirmed—and in ways that goes beyond fetishizing Black trauma. “Culturally responsive materials can enhance students’ engagement, improve their academic achievement, and support their written and oral language development and reading comprehension. Research shows that for Black girls, especially, teaching approaches that deliberately help to leverage and sustain students’ cultural experiences serve as “protective factors” in otherwise hostile environments. As one researcher reports: “F]eeling positive about being Black, and feeling support and belonging … may be especially important for African-American girls’ classroom engagement and curiosity.”

Cooperative discussion-based learning Black Girls Stay Lit™ believes learning should be a social and purpose-driven activity, so we engage reading and writing as shared social experiences of meaning-making. This allows for the co-creation of knowledge, and the development of concrete actions for addressing personal, communal and global challenges to our self-actualization, freedom and justice. More than 1200 studies have found that “cooperative learning methods improve students' time on tasks and intrinsic motivation to learn, as well as students' interpersonal relationships and expectations for success.” BGSL combines cooperative learning with a student-directed discussion approach, which emphasizes using evidence from an assigned text, asking questions with multiple answers, building off of others' comments, and creating a nonthreatening environment.

After directing the girls to the assigned text and thematic focus, Black Girls Stay Lit™ facilitators allow the student-directed discourse to flow by assuming the role of encouraging co-learner rather than group leader. Our girls learn how to formulate questions in ways that encourages their peers to join the conversation and they discover that listening to other students’ opinions is just as important as asking engaging questions. Because the student-led discussions are conversational and open, rather than a teacher-led lecture, our girls can feel confident in exploring their ideas and opinions, discussing new concepts with peers who have similar levels of understanding, considering other opinions before reaching a conclusion and solving problems collectively. These strategies not only promote active participation, improve comprehension of the text and critical-thinking skills but they also prepare students for real-world collaboration.

Inquiry-Based Learning Black Girls Stay Lit™ approaches learning and knowledge as interconnected and contextually dependent. For this reason, we use inquiry-based learning, a learning and teaching method that prioritizes student questions, ideas and analyses. In this method, facilitators guide studen​​​​ts’ thought processes through queries, thus helping them master “how to think" rather than “what to think."​ Textual themes, concepts and events are discussed as open-ended problems that BGSL participants are encouraged to question, elaborate upon, and define in relationship to the real-life problems being represented. Program facilitators model the evidence-based reasoning and creative problem-solving that the girls then use to identify causes, reach conclusions and propose actions that can be taken to solve them—both orally and in writing, as well as in their everyday lives—thus giving Black Girls Stay Lit™ participants a concrete purpose for the literacy they are developing.

Leadership Development Black Girls Stay Lit™ promotes the development of girl’s leadership skills by way of these methods: Cooperative Discussion-Based Learning, Inquiry-Based Learning and Decentered Facilitators. In addition, our program’s facilitators address and enable participants’ individual learning needs, interests and expertise by offering them active roles in formulating and upholding group codes of conduct and developing learning activities, writing projects and group activism. These approaches support youth in “developing the ability to analyze their own strengths and weaknesses, set personal and professional goals, and have the self-esteem, confidence, motivation, and abilities to carry them out.”

Decentered Facilitators Rather than acting as authorities who hold all knowledge and issue judgements in the form of grades, Black Girls Stay Lit™ facilitators serve as knowledgeable guides, mediators, coaches, mentors and ‘Other Mothers’/Aunties, as well as highly skilled instructors. Instead of grades, our girls receive expert guidance, encouraging feedback, and unwavering support.

Learning Circle Rather than standing before students at desks, Black Girls Stay Lit™ facilitators sit with and among our girls in a Learning Circle—an organizational structure and a descriptive metaphor that symbolizes the coming together of equals who recognize one another as capable, competent conveyors of information that may be safely shared. The learning circle format is meant to establish a collaborative atmosphere by breaking down the traditional classroom hierarchy so that both BGSL facilitators and participants can teach and learn from one another as co-creators of knowledge and meaning. Studies find that social interaction is encouraged when individuals are able to establish face-to-face contact and that circular arrangements produce “more on-task comments, more questions, and fewer indications of withdrawal from the class activity, as compared to seating students in rows and columns.” Within the Black Girls Stay Lit™ circle, we make every effort to support and empower one another’s development by promoting reciprocity, facilitating the equal participation of all, and honoring our individual and collective wisdom.

Journal writing Reading and writing flow from, and inform, one another in the Black Girls Stay Lit™ curriculum and journal writing is one of our primary learning tools. A customized Black Girls Stay Lit™ journal is distributed to each program participant because journal writing fosters learning in many ways: it expands student vocabulary, increases retention of learning, uses higher-order thinking skills, builds teacher-student relationships. Journal writing also contributes to the development of a healthy sense of identity and provides a safe space for students to process their understanding of selected readings, without the fear of making an error or answering incorrectly. The Black Girls Stay Lit™ journal enables our girls to be actively engaged in their own learning, to become more fluent in expressing their ideas in writing, and to clarify and reflect upon their thinking processes. They complete in-journal responses to the themes, key concepts and events of the selected texts and related discussions, connecting them to their personal experiences, opinions and questions. The girls’ journal entries often serve as springboards for their writing projects.