This is the third and final installment in a series of posts about the book Unearthing Joy by Gholdy Muhammad. This book has provided me with a framework and lens through which I can continue to rethink and elevate my curriculum and unit plans.

Background: In the fall of 2025, I launched a Slow Book Club to explore this text with like-minded educators. I am eager to share what I have learned about Muhammad’s Historically Responsive Literacy Framework, about joy, and about the kinds of classrooms we can build together. 

From the Mundane to the Meaningful

After exploring the five pursuits in a variety of contexts, Dr. Muhammad presents readers with a challenge. Specifically, design a lesson or a unit about a mundane object sitting on your desk using all five pursuits.

• Identity – teaching students to know themselves and others;
• Skills – teaching students the proficiencies needed;
• Intellectualism – teaching students new knowledge;
• Criticality – teaching students to understand and disrupt oppression; and
• Joy – teaching students about the beauty and truth in humanity.

Call me a nerd, but the unit plans our book club members came up with got me really fired up. We designed a unit plan about the salad Michelle F. was eating. The fidget on Elodie’s desk. The water Michelle R. was drinking. My cellphone. The slang poster on Julie’s wall.

Criticality and Joy Start With Us

I have always loved the fact that you can teach absolutely anything through a world language. However, if you can teach about anything, how do you ensure it is respectful, culturally responsive, and thoughtful?

Therefore, the five pursuits guide my curriculum planning: Where are students seeing themselves and learning about others? What skills are they developing? What meaningful knowledge are they gaining? How are they developing critical consciousness? Finally, how do we elevate humanity (joy, as Dr. Muhammad defines it)?

Let’s be clear: the five pursuits are not a checklist, but a framework. In order to use this framework, we first need understand our positionality as educators and examine what we bring to the classroom. We should also acknowledge and dig deep into our own blind spots and internalized biases. Here are a few educators you can follow to begin or continue this work:

• Zaretta Hammond
• Lisa Delpit
• Lorena Germán and the Multicultural Classroom
• L.J. Randolph
• Abelardo Almazán-Vázquez
• Ben Tinsley
• Adriana Ramirez
• Françoise Thenoux

I am revisiting familiar units, dreaming up new ones, and using the five pursuits to examine my choices. As I continue to shape my new 8th grade curriculum (Novice Nigh), I can’t wait to share what emerges with you!

To read the other two installments, click here.