Social Justice Goals for the Classroom
Integrating Our Social Justice Teaching
To ensure social justice work in the classroom isn’t condemned to a just a daily or weekly task students complete before moving on to whatever comes next on the agenda, it’s critical to make social justice efforts a part of who we are - rather than just what we do. To accomplish this, social justice needs be integrated across various parts of the school day, becoming a lens through which we make sense of many of the things we learn as readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, and social scientists.
It’s not enough for us to read one issue-based book each week or to occasionally set aside a half hour to talk about current events. These sorts of engagements are certainly worthwhile, but in isolation they fall short of helping students develop a new way of being that demands they routinely observe the world more closely and ask critical questions. Integrating social justice into the studies we’re already engaged in not only communicates the importance of this work but allows our students to take the skills they’re learning in the classroom and apply them in meaningful ways.
Furthermore, integrating social justice work into our everyday curriculum helps make certain this work will never be pushed aside when it feels as though there just isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done. The truth is there’s never going to be enough time for “yet another thing.” That’s why integration is key—but so are priorities. It’s not enough to teach the academic skills listed in our state standards and feel as though our job is done. Nor is it enough to simply teach about issues of social justice. Our work needs to accomplish both, hand in hand.
Social Justice Domains
To integrate our social justice teaching into all parts of our curricular studies, we need to first identify what it is precisely we’re integrating. Teaching Tolerance has developed a helpful social justice framework to organize our thinking around this work. Their framework categorizes components of social justice teaching into four distinct domains: identity, diversity, justice, and activism. These domains don’t constitute individual units or lessons that are “covered” then left behind. Rather, each moves in and out of our teaching during various parts of the school year within the context of our daily studies. Here is a description of what each domain aims to achieve:
Identity: Ensure students develop positive social identities while at the same time coming to understand their identities are complex and multilayered.
Diversity: Support students to develop a cultural competence that allows them to not only appreciate the many similarities and differences between individuals and social groups but understand the value these offer our society as a whole.
Justice: Teach students to recognize the relationship between individual and systemic acts of bias, injustice, and oppression and the role power and privilege play in shaping how we experience the world.
Activism: Help students identify and dismantle their own role in supporting harmful beliefs and practices, stand up for the rights of others, and reach out to educate others on issues that are important to them.
Establishing Explicit Goals for Our Students
If we are to be successful, it’s crucial we establish specific learning goals that define our social justice work. Below are a list of such goals (and subsequent skills and strategies) that make for a great place to begin. This list has been adapted from Social Justice Talk: Strategies for Teaching Critical Awareness (Hass, 2020).
Construct a strong community within the classroom.
1. Build strong relationships with a diversity of peers.
2. Show genuine interest in the lives and thoughts of others.
3. Listen to others with interest and with the intention to understand.
4. Warmly invite others into active participation to ensure they know they are welcomed and included.
5. Provide help when help is needed.
6. Acknowledge and appreciate the approximations made by others as part of the learning process.
7. Resolve conflicts in a healthy manner using respectful voices.
Appreciate the value of their individuality as well as the many social groups to which they belong.
1. Develop a positive sense of identity as an individual as well as a member of the various social groups to which one belongs.
2. Demonstrate comfort and pride in being different from others while at the same time appreciating our similarities.
Understand diversity takes on many forms and holds great value.
1. Understand our identities are not singular but the intersection of many social groups to which we belong.
2. Develop a deeper understanding of other cultures that moves beyond superficial understandings and challenges stereotypes.
3. Develop an appreciation for the cultural values and contributions of various groups within the community, nation, and world.
Possess a critical curiosity about the world.
1. Observe the world closely and ask questions about those things that seem to lack explanation.
2. Demonstrate an expectation to understand.
Question social beliefs and practices on a regular basis.
1. Observe the world closely and ask questions about those things that seem to lack examination or justice.
2. Make connections between multiple issues and events while acknowledging the roles of power and privilege.
3. Identify our own role in supporting problematic and harmful beliefs and practices.
Be informed of current events and issues affecting their communities.
1. Read, analyze, and share out news articles detailing current events that speak to the rights, accomplishments, and lived experiences of those in our community, nation, and world.
Identify acts of oppression and the false beliefs that encourage people to support them.
1. Identify aspects of society that are unfair to particular social groups.
2. Name the beliefs being employed to make those in power feel just in their actions.
Understand the value of multiple perspectives.
1. Seek out competing understandings and weigh these against the known facts.
2. Work to understand where competing understandings come from/the beliefs on which they are constructed.
3. Seek out primary resources, including firsthand reports from those with personal experiences and knowledge.
4. Work to generate beliefs through the process of inquiry.
Live alongside others in a democratic way.
1. Share concerns openly and with respect for others.
2. Resolve issues and conflicts in a manner that, as much as possible, meets the needs of all involved.
3. Engage in respectful, but contested, discussion around a wide variety of topics and issues.
Become critical consumers of information.
1. Ask where this information originated.
2. Ask for whom this information speaks.
3. Ask who this information benefits.
4. Ask who this information ignores or misrepresents.
Take action on their convictions.
1. Revise our own social beliefs and practices when they pose harm to others or support systems of oppression.
2. Disrupt acts of oppression and the false beliefs that encourage people to support them.
3. Identify and act upon opportunities to take our knowledge to new audiences who are in a position to create greater change.
If you’re interested in learning more about integrating social justice teaching, using the Social Justice Domains to guide your planning, or establishing and achieving specific learning goals with your students, contact us to suggest we create a Professional Learning Group around any of these topics. We’d love to explore these alongside you and other social justice teachers in the area.