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Thursday, October 30, 2008

Social Justice

After reading through the article, I'm still not sure how to teach social justice. It's not that there is a right or wrong way, but there are many aspects that need to be taught. I am currently taking Public Speaking for Social Justice here at Salem State, and can relate that class to this article. Each week we take into consideration different social justice issues, and sometimes I think my Professor sometimes struggles with how to teach us. At our level the social justice issues are more about race, culture, politics, health, and other things like that, whereas in an elementary school classroom I think you would be more likely to find things like community involvment, acceptance, how to be a good person, things like that.
Social justice overall is a complicated subject, my question is How do you teach it all? I realize that in the article the author said you can't teach it all or do everything, but to me that's sort of disappointing. I know that you can only really try and do your best, but I feel that children need to be able to get everything out of their education. Not every child will get the opportunities and advantages they deserve but I feel it is our job as teachers to make sure they get the most from us possible.
This article was eyeopening to how many things actually need to be touched on in a classroom, and I now have higher hopes for myself once I am a teacher. I want to be the teacher who makes as much available to my students as possible. I want to have the kind of classroom that feels liek a community in itself, so no one is left out. Despite the complexities to the issue of teaching social justice, I believe that with a good teacher and the right amount of effort, students can get what they need.

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