After reading the following from Fritzgerald’s spotlight account below – begin thinking about how you could build a school-wide or even classroom-wide initiative (from the perspective of a teacher) that would jump-start social justice within your learning environment.
1. What do you see in this world that bothers you?
2. What are you willing to do about it?
And this applies for teachers, teacher-leaders, administrators. How could you create a climate that would allow your student body to get involved with these initiatives as well? What would that look like in your school? Fritzgerald utilized Facing History and Ourselves as a guide – what other resources are available that would allow you to create a climate and culture of critical thinking and doing?
This is pretty informal – just read the entire passage below paying specific attention and in a Word document – summarize your thoughts, ideas, hopes, and fears.
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“IMPLEMENTATION SPOTLIGHT
BY ANDRATESHA FRITZGERALD
The local newspaper described the city as “three miles of misery.” It was a small article about the possibilities of merging this small urban suburb with its much larger metropolitan counterpart. I overheard some of my students dialoguing about this depressing phrase used to describe their lives, their homes, and their schools. They discussed what was missing from their community and their world. What troubled me in particular was the overall tone of their conversation: “It is what it is.” Instead of incensing them, they were accepting this misnomer as truth. They were silenced.
It bothered me that a reporter was coloring their perception of their city from the outside in. Someone else was allowed to speak, with authority, for the entire city their city.
Some time after this conversation, a veteran teacher from the Social Studies Department invited me, an English teacher, to participate in a professional development session. She had been to a training and felt a sense of commitment and vocation to the work of the organization. After the utilization of every propaganda technique she knew, she somehow convinced me to give up a full week of my summer, with no additional compensation, to attend a seminar titled “Holocaust and Human Behavior” offered by Facing History and Ourselves. I didn’t readily see a connection with the curriculum I was prepared to implement or a connection with our 99 percent African American demographic, but I went. I didn’t know anything about the organization and had never
heard of it. It is difficult to describe the transformation that took place during that extraordinary training. At the end of that week I saw myself differently. I saw my world differently. I agonized over the silence of my students and the apathy of me, their teacher, who did not push them to speak at all.
Facing History and Ourselves is a unique nonprofit organization that integrates “the study of history, literature and human behavior with ethical decision making and innovative teaching strategies. “This organization offers programming for secondary teachers to promote students’ historical understanding, critical thinking and social emotional learning.” Students and teachers constantly confront their own beliefs in the mirror of their actions. The training explores the impact of individual choices on the history of our world and how human behavior can either help us or haunt us when confronted with ethical dilemmas of today.
This strategy helps students to explore history and literature while at the same time reflecting on modern -day dilemmas where they are faced with the life-altering choice of silence or speaking out. Students learn to weigh the caustic divide of upstander or bystander and decide the worth of the risk or the impact of the silence The students explored literature, videos, poetry, and primary documents to gain a better understanding of what has happened in history when bystanders are plenty and upstanders are few. Students worked through what Facing History refers to as the scope and sequence This structure is simply the road map of the journey of discovery that both teachers and students take together This structure promotes inquiry and
personal discovery, but most importantly, is a clarion call to action.
To Facing History, pedagogy is not a set of teaching techniques that can be used to get across particular ideas or encourage effective practice of specified skills. It is an active process of engaging young people with challenging content through a process that builds the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of deep civic learning
Facing History created the Pedagogical Triangle for Historical and Civic Understanding to serve as a touchstone for balanced program and lesson planning. “The arrows between intellectual rigor, emotional engagement, and ethical reflection are bidirectional, as these processes strengthen each other. At the center is the students’ civic agency, their belief that they can play a positive role in their peer groups, schools, communities, and the larger world.”
INTELLECTUAL RIGOR
-INFORMED CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY
– -EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT
– – -ETHICAL REFLECTION
After working through various ideas about culture, identity, and human behavior, students were given the option to choose an area of need in their school, city, state, country, or world to speak on. This alignment to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) ensured that they had the power to identify their own barrier. This was learner-centered and directed. They were given the opportunity to write a letter to a person who had power to make a difference on the issue they had chosen to speak on. The letter writing gave us an opportunity to explore nuances of language covered in the language arts standards but with the invigoration of a personal issue to fan the standards into a flame in action. Students wrote drafts, and because they had carefully chosen the eyes they
wanted to read their words, they proofread. They recruited other teachers, classmates, and friends to read over their words, fostering collaboration and community to increase engagement. They solicited feedback to ensure the final product was perfect. I loved to hear students hold steady on their stances when challenged by others. I remember one girl telling her classmate, “That’s what you would say in your letter, but this one is mine.”
After careful preparation, a slew of letters went out to members of the school board, the mayor of the city, the cafeteria manager, local news anchors, national press correspondents, actors, actresses, football players, doctors, and even the president of the United States. They had spoken. They had used their voices to make a ripple in the waters of complacency. They had a voice because teachers allowed them to have a voice. The power is ours, and we need to transfer it to our students.
I was cautiously optimistic about sending the letters out because I knew that rocking the boat and challenging the status quo is not always welcomed, whether you are 13 years old or 73 years old. I prepared my students with the obligatory speech about speaking out being its own reward regardless of the responses. Then the most ridiculously beautiful thing started happening. Responses started coming in from local legislators, national activists, and even a form letter from the office of the President of the United States.
There was a shift in our classroom from, “No one wants to hear from us,” to “Everyone needs to hear from us.” From this point on the same teacher who invited me to the training continued to partner with me on cross-curricular lessons that empowered the students to “Choose to Participate,” the true power of UDL. With the same students, she helped them build on their letter-writing campaign to increase their influence. The powerful outcomes of the scope and sequence led to students identifying bullying as an issue they desired to tackle. They crafted a program to present at elementary schools, and a video documenting their work was featured on the Not in Our Town website. They also continued working with elementary students as mentors.
After the video, our students continued to develop their own challenge-based personalized experiences because our district is committed, at its core, to the implementation of UDL. They even presented to pre-service teachers to help prepare them for success in urban school districts.
Social justice in education happens when students move from silence to empowerment. Increasing the reach of a student’s voice from the fluorescent lights of the four walls of our classrooms to the echoes of the SHARE buttons on social media is truly freedom and empowerment.
Equity in education is best evidenced when the students are empowered to impact the world around them. Keeping their voices caged in for our own eyes and ears cheats them of the opportunity to influence the world in real-time. Building lessons around two questions will jump-start social justice in your learning environment:
What do you see in this world that bothers you?
What are you willing to do about it?
Authentic interactions with real-world movers and shakers empower the voiceless to speak up and be heard. Every student deserves the opportunity to be heard. Socially just, inclusive instruction is the mechanism that empowers a whisper with a megaphone. I believe in giving students the gift of developing, hearing, and sharing their own voice with you, their classmates, and the world. Social justice is not teaching and learning for the sake of any assessment but rather striving for teaching and learning that improves the quality of life for all by providing them with options and choices to meet rigorous standards while participating in authentic, powerful learning.”
