AFROCENTRIC EDUCATOR GROWTH FRAMEWORK

The Afrocentric Educator Framework is a culturally grounded model designed to support educators in teaching, leading, and coaching from a place of identity, history, and collective responsibility. Rooted in Afrocentric educational thought, this framework centers African diasporic ways of knowing as essential to academic excellence, student belonging, and sustainable school culture.

Developed by educator and school leader Sean Brown, the framework affirms that teaching is not neutral work. It positions educators as cultural carriers, truth-tellers, and community anchors whose identities are assets, not obstacles, in the classroom.

Too often, educators are asked to separate who they are from how they teach.
This framework rejects that separation.

The Afrocentric Educator Framework exists to:

• Center culture as a foundation for learning, not an add-on
   
• Affirm Black identity, history, and humanity within instructional practice
   
• Strengthen collective responsibility over individualism
   
• Support classrooms rooted in dignity, belonging, and high expectations
   
• Move educators beyond compliance toward purpose-driven teaching
   

This framework is designed for educators who understand that liberation, rigor, and care are not competing values — they are braided together.

The braid is not only symbolic.
It is operationalized through the Get Better Faster–informed Scope & Sequence, drawing on the instructional coaching and development work pioneered by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo. 

Developed initially to accelerate teacher effectiveness through high-leverage, sequenced coaching moves, the Get Better Faster approach provides a disciplined structure to narrow focus, increase practice, and shorten the gap between feedback and improvement.

This framework adapts that structure — not its ideology wholesale, but its mechanics — and re-centers it within a culturally grounded, identity-affirming system.

In this model, the Get Better Faster Scope & Sequence functions as the delivery system for the braided framework.

• The Afrocentric Educator Growth Framework establishes purpose, identity, and collective responsibility as the starting point for growth.
   
• Black Masculine Caring (Dr. Lissa Bass) shapes how feedback, accountability, and protection are delivered, ensuring that urgency does not override dignity.
   
• Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings) anchors rigor, expectations, and outcomes in cultural competence and critical consciousness.

The framework ensures that educators are not left to interpret these ideas abstractly. Instead, growth is structured, sequenced, and coached in a way that allows educators to move from clarity to execution with urgency and support, while remaining culturally whole.

This framework is designed for:

• Classroom educators
   
• School leaders and instructional coaches
   
• District leaders and professional learning teams
   
• Organizations committed to culturally sustaining education
   

It is especially relevant for educators serving Black students and communities, and for institutions seeking to build learning environments grounded in cultural truth and academic excellence.

The Afrocentric Educator Growth Framework may be used for:

• Professional development
   
• Instructional reflection and planning
   
• Coaching and leadership development
   
• Curriculum design and cultural audits

This framework does not claim ownership of the Get Better Faster model.
It acknowledges and credits Paul Bambrick-Santoyo and Relay Graduate School of Education for the original scope and sequence structure.

What is offered here is a culturally grounded adaptation, designed to ensure that accelerated growth does not require assimilation, tone policing, or fragmentation of identity.

The result is disciplined improvement with care, with context, and with humanity intact.