I believe that social justice lessons, if done right, are very beneficial to supporting our students into becoming well rounded and successful adults. From the start of my education to become a licensed teacher, I have always said that I want to teach because I can impact of future, the students. The chapter from Engaging Students’ Social Imagination Without Telling Them What to Think: Two Curriculum Project stated that through social justice lessons, students "develop their own socially engaged views and voices". This perfectly explains why I would use a social justice lesson in my own classroom. I am very passionate about my student's voices being heard and this is a great way to do so. In the chapter it is also stated that the teacher "sought to develop a project that would allow her students to see the power of art and the power of their own ideas beyond the classroom". The essential question I chose to utilize for this lesson was "how do viewer's read a work of art". I believe that allowing my students to chose what they research and explaining the purpose of art in social justice is integral in supporting my students voices. This ideology relates to the goal stated in the chapter: "not as a result of indoctrination or through adopting their teacher’s ideological leanings but through open-ended, learner-centered inquiry". My students are growing artistic skills, and simultaneously learning how to express their voices.
I chose to attempt my first social justice lesson during my week 6 of student teaching. My students had the choice of what topic they wanted to research and got to pick from middle school appropriate articles I compiled for the lesson. I talked with my mentor teacher about how I can compile resources for my students without spending hours on end finding articles and narrowing down their access too much. We came up with the solution of talking with the school's Social Studies (history) teachers and they offered to send me links to sites that have been vetted and deemed trustworthy. Because of this small act of collaboration, I was able to create a balance of control of access and freedom of expression in my lesson. I created steps for researching using a recommended platform containing plenty of resources students could choose from, and the day I began this lesson we all found out together that it was not on the districts list of website consent and students did not have access. My solution ended up meaning I had to read through every article and download them into an accessible google drive to successfully offer multiple sides to several social justice topics, and so students could at least find one article they could relate to or have interest in learning some about. Having connections and creating a classroom for everyone to feel the are a part of is very important to my teaching philosophy. My reason for not just choosing one topic was so my students voices are expressed through their choice, what they relate to, their backgrounds, and their artwork. For example, I have several Latina students so I included an article from Latina woman talking about how she's been injusticed by our society. The cool part of adding this article in to the selection was that not only the Latina students related. Some boys connected to the article and a Caucasian female student related to the article because she has also felt some of these injustices as well. By giving my students choice, I was able to create equity and acknowledge cultural diversity in my classroom.
Another challenge that I predicted may affect this lesson was that students may be deeply connected to and impacted by these topics, and that they may have opposing views. To make sure no conflict arose or hurt our community of learners, I had a chat with the class before beginning the lesson and let them know my firm expectations for showing respect and never joking about these topics. I think to better connect students to these expectations, I could have asked them to repeat what I said and facilitate time to converse about their own expectations. On the note of things I will do better, I plan to practice having students repeat what I said back to me instead of asking "okay" or "yes" in the future to further engage students. I noticed in the video students would nod or verbally confirm but I feel a responsibility to inspire more excitement especially in the form of engagement. This way students will leave my class and remember, rather than create something and forget why we did the lesson to begin with.
I am proud of how this lesson is going now that we are several days in and have been able to talk about the purpose of art in expressing our voices. Now that I have spent time grading their planning projects, I can also see they are very engaged in creating messages and the articles I was able to provide, which is super rewarding and exciting.
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