Culturally Affirming Practices Criteria

Village of Wisdom (VOW) partners with schools to support their assessment of the learning environments they provide to Black learners. Schools report that VOW assessments helped them learn about their strengths and areas for improvement in supporting Black learners; however, there was always the question of how schools could improve their practices. For some schools this entailed recommendations to partners that have expertise in their areas of need, while for others there was a call for specific strategies and resources for improvement. In response to these requests for support, VOW is creating the Blackprint for Black Genius (BP4BG) Resource Library where strategies are vetted by Black parents for their potential to affirm the cultures of Black youth. Likened to clearinghouses that share evidence about school-based interventions, the resource library will be a hub for culturally affirming learning strategies that are ready to implement in homes, schools, and other learning environments for Black youth.

VOW created a curriculum to train cohorts of Black parent researchers in establishing standards for evaluating practices, and then applying those standards to review strategies and resources that are intended for the learning environments of Black youth. This process accomplished two goals: (1) created an iterative process whereby a group of Black parents who have varying interests and experiences with education-related strategies can vet those practices and make recommendations for their use and their improvement, and 2) increased the use of Black parent wisdom to build evidence of culturally affirming learning environments for Black youth.