Critical Engagement & Social Justice Blog #5

     Over the past few months, I have learned a lot about how our biases can affect the classroom that we teach in. One major issue in the classroom is social justice. Social justice can lead to identifying the inequities and promote the fairness of all students getting the education that they need. Meaning that we as educators need to break down the barriers that can lead to these inequalities based off of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Every student deserves a quality education, so they can reach their full potential. It is our jobs as educators to not only teach our students about their own biases, but to bring cultural differences into the classroom. We need to create a fair and divers classroom. There is far to much history related to the unjustness of students education. As we know in our history books segregation had huge impact on the education that African American students received leaving them far behind their peers. Gender inequality played a big role in the social justice in how females received their education.

The society that we live in today does not talk about these subjects. Schools barely incorporate literature on a divers level. Students don’t get to read about the stories that are written by an African American or those who identify with a different gender. Teaching our students can give them the skills and knowledge to see the injustice in there academic, personal, and political lives. To make a real change action must be taken. An in article that talks about when inclusion meets resistance one of the others mention that they were asked to take a book out of their lineup because it had a “gay” character in it despite the parents being ok with it. The administrator even told that educator to even remove books from their classroom libraries that had similar characters and themes. Greathouse was an author of this article and even stated that in 2018 there were 347 challenged books and that six of the eleven books at the top had LGBTQ+ content. That really goes with the survey that GLSEN conducted.

·       81% of students who were LGBTQ+  felt unsafe in school.

·       68% felt unsafe in school due to their sexual orientation, gender identity and characteristics

·       76% had experienced verbal harassment based on sexual orientation and gender

As teachers, we foster a belonging in the classroom. It is up to us to create a form of unity in the community. A great way to get an idea on how the students think about a topic of social justice is for them to write about their personal experiences. Ebarvia, in her book Get Free, talks about a read-think-share approach. I believe this is a great way for students to get first-hand experience with how other people think about the social justices around us. They read about the topic and think about how it affects them, and other people then share their thoughts out loud. With technology on the rise digital literacy is becoming more apparent in the classroom. Students have easier access to articles. Digital literacy can help us educators teach our students about how to recognize hate speech and go against it. Asking students important questions about what they are reading and the inner workings of that reading such as the characters, who wrote it, what the theme(s) the story talks about, and what stories are being mainly read. As educators we need to know what we are reading and why we are reading it. Knowing what your schools policies are on the type of books you can read in the classroom is going to be important. Even though the education system is not well rounded because the education system has failed most of our students. Those of the LGBTQ+ community and those of the minority community.

By adding diversity to our classroom, it can help students understand that culture and help them learn to respect it. The government is how every students gets a chance at education, but it is up to the schools themselves what that education is. What we teach is how students grow. There will be times when you try to read a new story about a character the students have never read about and it might fail the first time, but trying and trying again is what leads to success. Creating a safe place where students can enjoy a great book and belonging is the type of classroom I aspire to have.

 

Resources

Greathouse, P., Consalvo, A., Covino, K., David, A. D., Eisenbach, B., & Letcher, M. (2020). When inclusion meets resistance: Resources for facing a challenge. English Journal, 110(1), 80–86. https://doi.org/10.58680/ej202030849

Insights, G. (2024). Social Justice Issues in education: Unpacking inequities and solutions. Gray Group International. https://www.graygroupintl.com/blog/social-justice-issues-in-education

Staff. (2023). Critical engagement with materials. Learning for Justice. https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/publications/critical-practices-for-social-justice-education/curriculum-and-instruction/critical-engagement-with-materials#:~:text=Critical%20Practices%20for%20Social%20Justice%20Education&text=Critical%20engagement%20emphasizes%20the%20value,continually%20interrogating%20their%20own%20work.

Unknown. (2021). The 2021 National School Climate Survey. GLSEN. https://www.glsen.org/research/2021-national-school-climate-survey

 

KATE Conference Blog

 

The KATE Conference was an exciting time for me. The conference took place on November 1^st and 2^nd. Sadly, I was not able to make the first day of the conference. That does not mean I did not have a great time. I went to a breakout session that talked about the KATE Pages which is their blog and their Kansas English which is peer reviewed journals where teachers can write about anything English related to help out other teachers. I was more interested in learning about the blog than anything else. With their blog it is less formal, so more stuff gets published than with the Kansas English journal. I liked learning about how to submit work to the blog and that they showcase students works as part of their voices of America. That being said teachers and educators can show their short stories and creative work on the blog as well. There are limits to the number of words the post can be which I don’t think is a big problem but trying to get students to write 1000 words or less does seem like a problem. Students these days only write thinking that their teacher is the audience, but I believe getting them to publish their work on the blog is a great tool to help them broaden their audience.

The Peer-reviewed journal is a great tool for English educator and teachers. I especially recommend new teachers check out the column teaching tips. As new teachers come into our schools, we can never get enough help. Eventually problems arise and with the column teaching tips it is most likely that another teacher has had the same problem, and you read about their experience with that problem and gather ideas on how you can handle it. They even have book reviews, reflective essays, practitioner pieces, and Kansas-Specific Articles which are all helpful tools for a new English teacher. With the practitioner pieces teachers in the ELA describe how they teach a particular skill, text, or concept in their classroom. Scholarly articles have research-based studies and academic arguments that are supported by research done in the ELA or literacy education. The book reviews are help because if you are struggling to find a book to teach in the classroom you look at this specific column to get an idea on children’s/Young adult books and recent published English/literacy pedagogy texts. It help to continue to learn and absorb knowledge. With the pedagogy texts you can learn new ways to do assessments or even get ideas on how to teach a text in the classroom.

The reflective essays are about how to teach ELA and/or literacy in the classroom and as a new teacher stepping into the classroom you never have enough information to use. The Kansas articles are in general relatively easy to understand. They are articles that have been published about ELA/literacy that are specific to Kansas. I believe this website is essential for learning more about the English Language Arts classroom. The guess speaker Jason DeHart talked about how comics and graphic novels have gotten a better reputation in the classroom. He also talked about the complexity of these pieces can be, not just in the artwork but in the way it is presented with its themes. I thought it was really interesting to learn more about how we can use comics and graphic novels in the classroom. Not only that but picture books can be just as complex. There really is no perfect book to teach in the classroom. Every book be essential even if it does not spark every student in the classroom. As long as one student is inspired to continue reading and writing then I would say that the book was perfect for them. The KATE conference is an incredible place to learn more about the ELA classroom and a great way to make connections with other teachers and learn from their experiences.

With that said if this blog post has inspired you the dates are step for next year. Save the date for 2025 KATE conference October 24^th and 25^th. This is a great way to get student teachers introduced to more experienced teachers and as a student teacher myself I had a blast creating my own panel with my fellow classmates and teacher. I did a book talk on the book Invisible Son by Kim Johnson and how you can use this YA book in the classroom and if I can do it so can you.