Social Justice: Beyond the Four Walls

The avenue I took to find out what social justice is was through Pinterst. This might seem unscholarly but I find that I can find articles written by real people I can connect with or that have had first had experiences with teaching about social justice. I found an article on Eutopia.org that explains what social justice is and why/how it should be used in the classroom. The definition I found is that “Social justice is recognizing and acting upon the power that we have for making positive change” (Dell’Angelo). There are many reasons that social justice is important to the classroom but everyday, as teachers, we participate in some sort of social justice in the classroom. The only thing is that teachers don’t always use it explicitly, this way the students might not completely understand how social justice is important in their lives. One way that you can incorporate social justice in the classroom is to link what you are teaching to what is actually going on in the real world. Breaking down the classroom walls so that students can understand that there is more out to learn outside of those 4 walls. Some important things that the article breaks down about having these discussions in your classroom is to help our students understands facts from opinions, figuring out their own view and other points of view and interpreting all the information before you decide the truth. Teaching this at such valuable lesson for students because they will use this method of understand controversial topics for the rest of their lives. I also like the aspect of the article to create a classroom community that is comfortable with discussion. I think it is important to let students share their OWN ideas not just the ones we “expect” them to share. Another component of the article was giving authentic assessments in your classroom. These assessments give the students the opportunity to write to real audiences, share knowledge with a wide amount of people and engage in the kind of work that happens outside the classroom. 

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/creating-classrooms-for-social-justice-tabitha-dellangelo?crlt_pid=camp.NRQhcTCRoPbX