In the face of rising book bans and calls to eliminate Black history from school curriculums, CDF’s Ella Baker Child Policy Teacher Training Institute has never been more important. Through the Institute, we train motivated, caring K-12 teachers to bring our trusted CDF Freedom Schools® pedagogy into their own classrooms—teachers like Miesha Purvis.
“I don’t call teaching my passion,” says the fifth-grade English and Language Arts teacher, “because passion does die. Teaching is my purpose. I wanted to be a part of the CDF fellowship because I wanted to perfect some of my pedagogy and find more ways to center my Blackness as an educator.”
For Miesha, teaching at a school in the community where she grew up, it’s important to show her students a Black woman at the front of the classroom. “I speak like them,” she says. “And I create a safe space. We’re touching hearts and minds. We’re shaping these kids, so it’s very important. I can never take what I do for granted, and everything that I say and everything that I do is important because I have children that are looking at me and they’re like sponges.”
One key principle Miesha brought into her classroom was finding ways to center even seemingly unrelated curriculum on Black and Brown students. For example, when studying geology, Miesha gave homework to learn about a Black geologist. “It’s great knowing I could take one thing from my curriculum that had nothing to do with them being Black, their environment, or socioeconomic background, and aid them in learning about a Black scientist who studies rocks. You just never know what seed could have been planted in that moment.”
Miesha wants you to know that you’re planting seeds, too, through your support for CDF and teachers like her. “There are times when you don’t see that change happening,” she says, “but you have to trust and have faith that even your little bit is doing such a great thing. This is very important work. Every little bit helps, and you’re doing a great and vast thing.”