Black Girl Genius Educator Summit '26

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 keep becoming.

This year's theme, The Send-Off, borrows from one of Black culture's most significant rites of passage: the prom send-off. Each spring, social media fills with commentary rooted in racism, classism, and misogynoir toward how Black families celebrate their kids going to prom. Where bar and bat mitzvahs, Sweet 16s, quinceañeras, and debutante balls are widely accepted as coming-of-age celebrations, Black youth and their parents get ridiculed for celebrating too loudly, too proudly, too much.

This year, we're centering the Black prom send-off as what it actually is: a culturally significant, research-backed rite of passage. And we're asking what it means to extend that same care beyond prom night —

• How do we combat the adultification of Black girls, inside and outside the classroom — the forces that age them up and refuse to acknowledge their innocence and girlhood?
• How do we hold space for Black girls to rest softly into girlhood and grow gracefully into adulthood?
• How do we protect Black girls' coming-of-age stories, and make room for Black girls and women to keep having them — letting becoming stay a lifelong journey, not a one-time milestone?
• How do we embrace becoming over rushing? Over shrinking?

Why We Gather:

Black girls are aged up before they're ready — seen as less innocent, less in need of protection, and held to standards no child should carry. Adultification bias shapes how they're disciplined, how they're seen, and how often their coming-of-age gets skipped past instead of honored.

• Black girls make up 15.6% of school enrollment but 36.6% of in-school suspensions, 41.6% of single suspensions, and 52.0% of multiple suspensions Georgetown
• Research shows adults view Black girls as needing less nurturing and less protection than their white peers, especially between ages 5–14 Community Commons
• Black women and girls across every age group report experiencing adultification bias in their own lived experience — this isn't a childhood issue we age out of, it follows us Georgetown

We send each other off because these conditions are too grave not to.

What You Will Walk Away With:
Learning Targets for the Black Girl Genius Educator Summit 2026

• I can name adultification bias when I see it, and build classroom and community practices that protect Black girls' innocence and girlhood.
• I can honor Black girls' coming-of-age stories as they're actually lived, instead of rushing past them or assuming they've already happened.
• I can recognize that becoming is not a single milestone — for Black girls and for myself — and make room for coming-of-age at every age.
• I can engage critically and creatively with texts and stories that illuminate Black girlhood, resistance, and coming-of-age as an ongoing practice.
• I can create a found poem that honors a Black girl I know or once was, using her own words and mine to send her off with care.
• I can name what I'm ready to release and declare what I'm walking toward — my own send-off into who I'm becoming next.

Who Should Attend:

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

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

Dress Code:

Day 1: Black Girl Sitcom
Wear a fit inspired by a Black girl TV character

Day 2: Black Girl JEAN-ius
Wear your flyest denim.