Social Justice

I read an article called "Creating Classrooms for Social Justice" by Tabitha Dell’Angelo. In the article she describes social justice as "recognizing and acting upon the power that we have for making positive change". She says that in order to bring social justice into the classroom teachers need to learn about their students and meet their needs. The teacher needs to make lessons that values the students and what they already know. Making relationships with students is really important in order to achieve social justice in the classroom.When teaching a lesson the teacher should not impose his beliefs on the students, but "support students' own journey of learning how to be critical thinkers and forming their own opinions". The lesson should also have some kind of value to the students. Students should just remember pointless facts, but be able to connect the lesson to the real world. Even if the class is not diverse the teacher should make an effort to bring diversity into the classroom. The teacher should choose curriculum which will teach students about the diverse aspects of society. Diversity in the classroom is really important.

I liked this article because it gave some good examples on how to create social justice in the classroom. This article talks about a lot of the stuff we talked about in class. To summarize social justice in the classroom would be making the classroom student centered and not teacher centered. Students should make connections with the lessons that will help them in the real world. The teacher should not rob the students from their education. Students should become critical thinkers and know how to use the information they learn in class. Every lesson needs to be meaningful and student centered. Assessment should not just be busy work, but serve a useful purpose.