Education

Spirited Minds and Strong Souls Singing,

The Givens Foundation's education program, is committed to being an innovative solution that supports Minnesota's academic standards for language arts and that helps to close the achievement gap for Twin Cities students. The program was developed in response to community requests and strategic mandate that the Foundation focus it activities and resources on enriching cultural understanding and enhancing the quality of education for learners by increasing their access to African American literature and writers, by leveraging the rich local artistic community, as well as drawing on historic works within Givens Collection of African American Literature at the University of Minnesota and the African American literary tradition.

Education Handout

Education Handbook

A Culturally Responsive Approach to Student Engagement and Learning

Spirited Minds and Strong Souls Singing, delivers black artists and writers into Twin Cities Metro classrooms to use African American literature as a vehicle for cultivating literary minds and enriching the quality of education for students by introducing school and district partners to innovative and culturally responsive approaches to classroom instruction, teacher training, curriculum development, and family and community engagement.

 

"A culturally responsive approach involves teachers using their students' culture as an important source of the students' education."

Dr. Alfred Tatum, Assistant Professor in the Department of Literacy Education at Northern Illinois University and author of Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males

Spirited Minds and Strong Souls Singing continues to develop long-term strategic partnerships with schools and districts to advance the literary skills – reading, writing, and critical thinking skills of students and to use culturally responsive methods to promote student engagement and learning.

The Givens Foundation's Strategies for Student Engagement and Learning
  1. African American Teaching Artists: Modeling culturally responsive instructional methods for teachers and diversifying the instructional experience of students.
  2. Innovative Classroom Instruction Methods: Using literary arts such as story-telling, creative writing, spoken word, hip-hop, fiction, poetry, memoir, and journalism.
  3. Inclusive Curricula: Increasing access to classic and contemporary African American literature.
  4. Family and Community Engagement: Creating student-centered educational products and performances that serve as a platform for family and community involvement and support.
Additional Resources

According to researcher Geneva Gay (2000), culturally responsive teaching:

  • Acknowledges students' cultural heritage as it affects their dispositions, attitudes, and approaches to learning, and recognizes that it contains content worthy to be included in the curriculum.
  • Builds meaning between students' home and schools experiences as well as between "school stuff" and the students' lived realities.
  • Uses a wide variety of instructional strategies.
  • Teaches an appreciation of the students' own cultural heritage as well as that of others.
  • Incorporates multicultural information, resources, and materials in all subjects and skills routinely taught in schools.