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