Ways to Teach Social Justice in the Classroom

In the course reading Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment by Drake, Reid, and Kolohon it discusses an interesting topic of how to teach social justice in the classroom. Within the reading it discusses how different organizations such as Me to We can be used to “empower and enable youth to be agents of change” (Drake et al., 2014, p. 164). I believe that the idea of teaching students about children all around the world is essential for the development of their understanding of the world. By allowing students to learn about different parts of the world and how they can do their part, by fundraising or other things, they will learn to be more caring and aware of injustices (Drake et al., 2014). An interesting article on teaching social justice brings up another point that teachers should start teaching social justice from an early age so that they begin to develop awareness and understanding that can later be built on when they are older (Hawkins, 2014).

Here is a great link to the UNICEF Canada website that gives teachers many resources on how to incorporate social justice in their curriculum, as well as many other ways to connect with people and classrooms around the world http://www.unicef.ca/en/our-work/article/global-classroom. This website would be a great tool for teachers looking to enrich their students with lessons that connect and even help others from around the world.

This particular reading from Drake et al. (2014) had me very interested and feeling connected to the reading. From personal experience last April 2015 I had the opportunity to travel with a group of Brock University students to Namibia (South Africa). In my travels I was able to go into and volunteer at an after school program set up by a women that helped further the learning of the children in lower income areas.

Photo taken of me in Namibia by a person on my trip.

Here is a link with more information about education in Namibia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Namibia.

This was a life changing experience for me and it allowed me to learn a lot about education and how it is different and similar in different locations. From this experience I can relate to the importance of teaching social justice in the classroom because even as a 21 year old Concurrent education student I was able to learn a lot from the perspective of another country. Throughout schools it would be extremely useful for students to learn about other countries and social justice to allow them to be an agent for change. Although not all schools, especially at primary/junior level, cannot always allow for trips like the one I had the opportunity to participate in they can do other smaller things like fundraisers to help a classroom from another country, or Skyping a classroom from around the world. Hawkins (2014) states that by using children’s literature it can also be a way to easily incorporate social justice from around the world into the classroom curriculum. Another interesting article suggests an alternative method of teaching social justice through music, since music often includes aspects of social injustice in the lyrics (Berman, 2015). The use of alternative methods like music could be an interesting way to introduce social injustice into curriculum since it can often be hard to talk about serious issues with children (Berman, 2015). By doing this students could see that students from all over the world are just like them and it will empower them to change the world so that every child gets the opportunity to learn the way they do.

Photo of a class Skyping taken from www.Flickr.com

References

Berman, A. S. (2015). Teaching social justice in the music classroom: music educators can open the door to dialogue and understanding of what can be difficult subjects to address. Teaching Music, (4). 38.

Drake, S. M., Reid, J. L., & Kolohon, W. (2014). Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21^st Century Learner. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Hawkins, K. (2014) Teaching for social justice, social responsibility and social inclusion: A respectful pedagogy for twenty-first century early childhood education. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 22(5). 723-738.