What is Social Justice? Why is it important in our classrooms?
For this week’s blog entry about social justice, we were given the opportunity to consider what social justice is and why it’s important to have in classrooms. I selected an article from Edutopia titled: “Creating Classrooms for Social Justice” (link to the article below).
I really liked this article because the author defined what social justice looks like in a classroom and to a teacher, and she also gave a couple tools and examples for teachers to create a classroom where social justice is established. According to the article, “Social justice is recognizing and acting upon the power that we have for making positive change.” In this case, social justice would be teachers using their power to recognize that all students deserve a chance to be in a classroom that values them and creates a positive environment. The reason social justice in a classroom is important is that it provides students a model and example of how positive change can be effective towards making students feel safe and also gives them the opportunity to believe they could invoke change as leaders. And, creating social justice doesn’t take away from teaching content, but rather they can support each other.
I really the idea of being a positive impact on students who might feel there is no social justice for them. Regardless of if your school is diverse, not diverse, urban, rural, there are always ways to implement social justice. Some examples the article outlines are “Connecting to Students’ Lives,” “Linking to Real-World Problems and Multiple Perspectives,” “Creating Classroom Community,” and Include Authentic Assessments.” My favorite one of these subjects is the “Creating Classroom Community” because I think creating a space where students are comfortable with differences, being able to express their ideas, and respond to other students’ ideas is a fundamental part of being a teacher. We can’t just expect students to be able to participate in a discussion if they don’t know their teacher and their peers; students might become reserved in sharing ideas with people they aren’t comfortable with.
I did a lesson about diversity in order to help build a classroom community. My approach to the lesson was about creating a classroom community and building relationships with students. Because I’m not in the classroom every day, like my mentor is, things like discussions weren’t going as well as I wanted them to. So, I asked myself why, and I realized I needed to establish that sharing ideas with peers and with me is okay. They understood this already with my mentor, but I hadn’t established that community between them and myself. So, my diversity lesson was to help build that community. Students could share what diversity meant to them, experiences, and learn from their peers. And at the end, I made a point to tell them that there is nothing wrong with being different and having different viewpoints and ideas from each other. The point of differences is to create a dialogue between all of us to respond positively and effectively to these differences.
Social justice applies to situations like this because there could be extremely different viewpoints within one class of 24 students. I might have students who identify as LGBTQ+ and other students who might identify as Christian. These different viewpoints might collide; however, establishing a community and social justice in the classroom can create positive discussions rather than students fearful to discuss sensitive issues because they don’t believe their view is valued in the classroom. While students might not agree with each other’s views and ideas, it’s my job as the teacher to protect all my students and their right to an education, regardless of background; all students deserve to know their teacher uses social justice in a positive, effective way to create dialogue and positive change in the classroom.
Teachers can also create classroom community by evaluating the literature that is being used in the classroom. Students connect more to literature of a diverse nature, meaning religion, ethnicity, language, sexual orientations, gender and gender identity, etc. However, for teachers to be following the idea of social justice when using diverse literature, they need to make sure they are using it in a non-stereotypical way. So, this might require research, talking to English teachers, librarians, community members to find appropriate literature which portrays different groups in a way that best represents the group to be used effectively in a classroom setting.
Overall, social justice is both a wide and important topic to talk about as teachers. We have to see our students as humans and individuals who bring their own backgrounds and cultures into the classroom; those backgrounds and cultures cannot be ignored, and more importantly, teachers cannot pick and choose which students or groups of students they give social justice for and leave out others. Every student who walks through my door deserves a place where they are not afraid to share their ideas about content because they all bring something valuable to contribute to the classroom.
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