It Takes a Village to Raise a Classroom: Black Family Wisdom in Education

What if schools stopped trying to “engage” Black families-and instead learned from them?

For generations, Black families have cultivated powerful systems of learning, advocacy, resilience, and care-often outside of, and in spite of, traditional school structures. In It Takes a Village to Raise a Classroom, Dr. Krystal L. Clemons reframes family engagement by centering the cultural wealth Black families already bring to education and showing how schools can partner with, rather than police or marginalize, that wisdom.

Blending research, lived experience, and vivid storytelling, this book helps educators, counselors, administrators, and community partners rethink how they build trust, identify giftedness, support neurodivergent learners, and create equitable systems of care. Through real classroom scenarios, family narratives, and actionable strategies, Dr. Clemons challenges deficit-based approaches and exposes how outdated engagement models contribute to disproportionality, misidentification, and fractured school-family relationships.

This is not a book about doing more programs.

It’s a book about doing engagement differently.