Black Girl Genius Educator Summit 2025

The Black Girl Genius Educator Summit is a liberatory teaching and learning experience in Detroit for educators, youth organizers, cultural workers, and co-conspirators committed to building classrooms and communities where Black girls can rise, dream, and fly freely.

This year's theme, Defying Gravity: Centering Black Girls' Genius, Joy, and Resistance, calls us to examine the forces that keep Black girls, and ourselves, grounded. We'll do the soul work to unlearn what we never should have carried and imagine what becomes possible when we center liberation, healing, and creative pedagogy.

Why We Gather:

Black girls are being disciplined for defiance, criminalized for expression, and silenced for simply existing in classrooms not built for them. They face adultification, appearance-based discrimination, and disproportionate punishment at every turn.

• Black girls are 3x more likely to be suspended than white girls
• 86% of Black teens who experience hair discrimination say it began by age 1
• Black girls are the fastest-growing population in the juvenile justice system

We defy gravity because these conditions are too grave not to.

What You Will Walk Away With:

Learning Targets for the Black Girl Genius Educator Summit 2025

• I can reflect on how systems attempt to shrink Black girls and how I must resist those forces in my own pedagogical and personal practices.
• I can identify truths and tensions in my own teaching, healing, and leadership journey and recognize them as sacred elements of my work with and for Black girls.
• I can engage critically and creatively with foundational texts that illuminate Black girlhood, resistance, and literacy as tools of transformation.
• I can examine how Black language is policed and reclaimed in classrooms, and commit to instructional practices that honor Black girls' full linguistic humanity.
• I can articulate and visually express my commitment to liberatory teaching by creating a zine that honors my story, vision, and work with Black girls.
• I can name and release what no longer serves my ability to uplift Black girls—and declare the truths that allow us all to defy gravity.

Who Should Attend:

• Black women educators, school leaders, and caregivers
• Youth organizers, cultural workers, and teaching artists
• Allies and co-conspirators are committed to equity for Black girls.

Everyone is welcome, but Black women and girls will be centered.

Dress Code: Black Girl JEAN-ius

Wear your flyest denim and your most gravity-defying hairstyle—fro'd up, bantu'd, braided high, or stacked like a crown.

Let's Defy Gravity Together

Info: Pick up your workbook, identity ribbon, and gift bag at the check-in table, then sip handcrafted mocktails by Serenity Rose as DJ Tee Two Times sets the tone with pass-the-mic karaoke. Explore the Elevated Sillage Perfume Bar and enjoy time to mingle, connect, and soak in the vibes.

Info: This intimate, intergenerational conversation invites two featured guests to share two truths that sustain their work—and one tension they’re still unlearning. Each story is paired with a personal image or artifact, offering a powerful glimpse into their lived experiences as educators, learners, and Black women navigating systems not built to hold them.

Together, we’ll reflect on what it means to carry conviction and contradiction—and what it takes to defy gravity in our own lives and classrooms.

Info: Explore stories that lift, challenge, and free us. During this self-paced literary experience, guests will move between curated book stations featuring texts by and about Black women and girls. Each station invites you to read, reflect, and respond through discussion prompts, sticky notes, or text tattoos. Choose your journey—visit 2–3 stations that speak to you. We’ll close with a collective debrief to surface insights, questions, and wonderings.

Info: This interactive keynote workshop invites educators to examine the ways Anti-Black Linguistic Racism shows up in schools, and how it silences Black girls’ voices, expression, and brilliance. Drawing from her groundbreaking work Linguistic Justice, Dr. April Baker-Bell will guide us through the soul work of confronting white linguistic supremacy and embracing antiracist, pro-Black language pedagogies.

Info: In this interactive creation space, we’ll lean into the brilliance, vulnerability, and style that define Black girlhood. Guided by Dr. Sheri K. Lewis and the MELT Magazine methodology, this session is a working celebration of identity, transformation, and creative expression.

Participants will craft their own digital zine page—part personal reflection, part editorial statement—by engaging in writing, image-making, and playful self-styling. You’ll write from the soul, title your truth, style a shoot, and lay it all out in a one-page Canva spread to be included in a collective digital issue.

Come ready to be seen, to be heard, to be cute, and to have fun.

No design experience necessary—just bring:
- A laptop
- A phone (or camera)
- Your full self

All props, wigs, mirrors, and makeup will be provided to help you express the many layers of your story.

Info: We close the day with a moment of breathtaking symbolism and celebration. Together, we’ll reflect on the truths that anchor us—and the weights we’re ready to release.

Each guest will receive a lantern and be invited to write one of two things:
- A truth that reflects how you—or the Black girls you love—defy gravity.
OR
- A commitment to release what no longer serves your ability to uplift Black girls.

As lanterns are raised, young vocal powerhouse Ava Dargin will perform “Defying Gravity,” offering a soaring tribute to our collective freedom dreams.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Skillman Foundation, 100 Talon Centre Drive, Detroit, United States