Title: How to Teach Social Justice in the Classroom | Resilient Educator
Headings: Teaching Social Justice in Theory and Practice
Teaching Social Justice in Theory and Practice
Goals of social justice
Adding the philosophy of social justice to the classroom
Fostering a classroom community of conscience
Helping students see each other as co-learners rather than adversaries
Including diverse experiences and backgrounds in classroom materials
Social justice in the real world: classroom discussions that help students critically engage with issues that affect them
Racism and social justice
Bullying, friendship and dating behavior
Turning social justice learning into community service and action
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Content: Teachers can model questions and answers that illustrate ways to thoughtful conversation rather than making students feel bad or devalued by their classmates. By providing model responses, teachers can illustrate to students how a good response helps to enrich a conversation whereas some responses can shut discussions down. Helping students see each other as co-learners rather than adversaries
Ideally, students should view each other as academic siblings or co-learners instead of competitors. This perspective allows students to understand that while disagreements may occur, they must work together to increase their knowledge. If students don’t perceive the classroom as competitive, they can approach the learning process as a path to solving problems instead of a mark of achievement only available to a few students. By creating this sort of classroom environment, teachers enable students to build each other up in conversation and action. Including diverse experiences and backgrounds in classroom materials
Teachers can also strengthen the classroom community through learning experiences that draw upon the diverse backgrounds of their students. New information that includes multiple perspectives will better resonate with students’ previous knowledge. Teachers must also be aware of the messages sent by the learning materials they use. To determine if texts are privileging certain narratives, teachers need to analyze whether they recount an event — the Civil War, for example — from multiple points of view or favor the dominant culture.