SOCIAL JUSTICE =)

After reading an article on Social justice, it opened my eyes to a whole different out look. In the article written by Herbert Khol, he gives his thoughts on what social justice is. He writes:

• First, don't teach against your conscience. Don't align yourself with texts, people, or rules that hurt children; resist them as creatively and effectively as you can, whether through humor or by developing alternative curricula. Try to survive, but don't make your survival in a particular job the overriding determinant of what you will or won't do. Don't become isolated or alone in your efforts; reach out to other teachers, community leaders, church people, and parents who feel as you do. Find a school where you can do your work and then stand up for the quality of your work. Don't quit in the face of opposition; make people work hard if they intend to fire or reprimand you for teaching equity and justice.




• Second, hone your craft as a teacher. When I first began teaching, I jumped into struggles for social justice. During one of my efforts a community person asked: "So, what's going on in your classroom that's different than what you're fighting against? Can your students read and do math?" I had to examine my work, which was full of passion and effort but deficient in craft. I realized that I needed to take the time to learn how to teach well before I extended myself with authority and confidence in organizing efforts. This is essential for caring teachers. We have to get it right for our own students before presuming to take on larger systems, no matter how terrible those larger systems are. As educators, we need to root our struggles for social justice in the work we do every day, in a particular community, with a particular group of students.




• Third, look around at the many effective ways of teaching children. I don't believe there is a single technique or curriculum that leads to success. Consequently, pick and choose, retool and restructure the best of what you find and make it your own. Most of all, watch your students and see what works. Listen to them, observe how they learn, and then, based on your experience and their responses, figure out how to practice social justice in your classroom.




• Fourth, it is not enough to teach well and create a social justice classroom separate from the larger community. You have to be a community activist, a good parent, a decent citizen, and an active community member as well




• Protect and nurture yourself. Have some fun in your life; learn new things that only obliquely relate to issues of social justice. Walk, play ball or chess, swim, fall in love. Don't forget how to laugh or feel good about the world. Have fun so that you can work hard; and work hard so that you and your students and their parents can have fun without looking over their shoulders. This is not a question of selfishness but one of survival. Don't turn teaching for social justice into a grim responsibility, but take it for the moral and social necessity that it is.

I agree with all of this. It is impossible to pick one style of teaching and success in your classroom, every student has a unique way of learning, and they all needed to be tendered to one way or another. Every year will be different as well, your going to have to pick different activities and figure out different ways to make your lessons a success each year, because your going to always have a new group of students with new learning capabilities.
I also feel as though it is important to not let the book teach the students, you need to teach them. In some places, there are schools filled with teachers who are not creative or motivated, and teach straight from the book. But little do these teachers know that thats putting their students to sleep before they can even register what theyre learning!


What i'm saying is, teachers should not teach their students to pass tests, they should teach them enough that they should be able to pass a test. And teaching along social justice is something i would highly consider in my future career.