There is a saying in the Black community that reads each one teach one. That statement advocates that everyone is responsible for community uplift through education. More importantly, it argues that everyone has something to offer. In that regard community centered learning has been at the base of the Africana experience. From slaves learning to read so that they can interpret the bible, to the survival tactics of covert (and overt) subversion and submission being passed down from generation to generation, to public schools being the number one drive next to voting after emancipation, collective and experiential learning has been at the center of Africana pedagogical practices. Africana studies was born out of an activist tradition, being a seed of the Black Power Movement, and as such, trains intellectuals to be activist-scholars. Pedagogy through the Africana paradigm should, therefore, be liberating. Students of color find deficit theorizing disempowering. Historically, studies on people of color have typically treated the Black and Brown experience (in particular) as a problem. Teaching from a Eurocentric framework has also done the same, by positioning all non-Euro peoples as receptors (rather than cultivators) of all things civilized. From the relationship that the social sciences has with Social Darwinism and Eugenics, one researchers objectivity has research subjects voicelessness. Given the Africana classroom experience, my pedagogical practices revolve around the notion that academia should be emancipatory. I have chosen a profession in teaching, because I come from the perspective of an activist-scholar that seeks to empower through scholarship. In my effort to engage and produce empowering literature, I also have a responsibility to teach empowerment. I am a firm believer in each one teach one. The Africana Paradigm is an important pedagogical tool because it assumes empowerment rather than the banking model of pedagogy. Rather than read and regurgitate, the Africana Paradigm pressures students to receive knowledge and appropriate it for use and/or enrichment. My teaching philosophy combines the Africana Paradigmatic idea of each one teach one with the Fredrick Douglass concept Power does not concede without a demand. Through this notion, I engage my students with the power imbedded in literature, scholarship and history in a way that their personal experiences can be related to scholarship, lecture and relevant experiences. In this regard, I employ an empirical technique employed by W.E.B. DuBois in The Philadelphia Negro called triangulation whereby multiple methods are use to study a single phenomenon, with the desire to empower. In the case of pedagogical practices, I use multiple fields of engagement for my students to both understand and apply knowledge. Scholarship is weighed against common discourse, social events, personal opinions and history. Thereby, the classroom is a multi-pronged dialectical experiment. As an instructor, I am given the opportunity to engage students with material that not only shapes their understanding but also themselves as individuals. Through this task, I attempt to create an environment where I am a proxy for students to access information that they would otherwise not be exposed to. It is through this relationship that I have with my students that I create a learning environment that seeks to cultivate minds in a organic, kinetic and safe environment. As such, I market myself as someone with expertise, but not an expert; while attempting to engage in a mutual learning experience where everyones knowledge is respected. Each one teach one seeks to value everyones knowledge, while, at the same time, attempting to add to that. Although all material is not exciting, it can be related to something that is, something that actively engages students imagination. No student enters the classroom a blank slate. They all have knowledge bases, experiences, skill sets that add to the diversity of information floating around the nebulous of intellectual inquiry that is the classroom. In the actual and virtual classroom, I both predict and influence the intellectual climate by borrowing from and adding to personal knowledge bases, experiences and skillsets as they relate to the scholarship. Not every student learns the same, so I use a dynamic that uses the personal experience with the scholarship that allows multiple access points and avenues to the same sources of information contained in the text so that all students are able to get the most out of their learning experience. Students are assessed with the expectation that they are engaged. As such, all media material used in class, along with discussions, and scholarship are all information sources that students are tested on. Because I am a firm believer in making learning personal, one method that I use to assess my students is what I call an Learning Audit Trail, where students record all of their learning experiences in and outside the classroom as it relates to course material. My secondary device is an organized discussion forum that seeks to do the same through a structured virtual platform. Students are also encouraged to discuss the given (traditional) tests, performance, and methods for improvement in their Learning Audit and forum discussions. Students are also graded for participation in terms of how often they engage in in-class discussion along with discussion forums. I attempt to make all information both intellectually and personally relevant to all students as a source of empowerment. In this personalization of the material, I seek to challenge students to engage the material. Questions like, what do you think, how does this make you feel, can you give an example of this or situations from popular media outlets are all used to engage students with the material by relating the known and unknown. In finding students interests or what they are interested in, in relation to the material, the paradigm shifts from students passively receiving to actively engaging in the material. Through that activation, students implicitly demand knowledge. That knowledge then becomes a part of their personal knowledge base, skill setbecomes a source of power to used, manipulated, taken advantage of, exploited and cherished.