We Are A Social Justice Education Program
October 14, 2020 |
“When we identify where our privilege intersects with somebody else's oppression, we'll find our opportunities to make real change.”― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race
Are You a Social Justice Warrior?
In non COVID times our licensure programs routinely send our students out for field placements in many of the various school districts in our area. We try to send them to different places for different experiences. Some of the most interesting conversations happen when they return to our classrooms and share with us the differences they witness in each experience. One student returned to my class and was angry about what she saw. She had previously spent time in an affluent suburban school district and had predominantly white middle to upper middle-class kids. She helped with the before school program and with various after school initiatives as well. Her next experience was in an urban district working with very poor mostly underrepresented families and children. There were no soccer programs, or after school enrichment opportunities. Many of the children she worked with only ate when they were fed at school. Most of the parents were less involved and there were very few parents involved with school at all-- not because they didn't care but because most were working 2 jobs to make ends meet. Her outrage as well as recent events has compelled me to write about our efforts to provide a social justice perspective in all of our education courses. Defining that is tricky, but it is crucial to understanding why education is central in an effort to create social justice in our society.
I wrote a book a few years ago using a social justice lens to deconstruct something called the Positive Behavioral Intervention Support System. As I was researching this topic, I learned that there are many opinions of what social justice actually is. Being a professor at a Jesuit university, I also learned that there is an Ignatian version of this concept. After reading them all I finally arrived at an amalgam that I think sums up what social justice means. Here it is:
Imagine a world where everyone had equal access to resources, opportunities and caring and competent teachers! All students would have the same access to the same courses, teachers and opportunities, regardless of where they lived or the color of their skin. This is what we are aiming for in our school of education and what I aim for every day when I show up to work. There is a framework that we teach our students to allow them to construct an understanding of how to operationalize a social justice perspective in teaching. Oaks, Lipton, Anderson and Stillman (2015) provide us with that framework. We present this to our students by saying that it is everyone’s responsibility to question the status quo, ask why things are this way and who benefits. Examine the politics and values behind policies and practices and attend to the way current practice contributes to the creation, maintenance and reproduction of inequalities.
It is our goal in the ECE/MCED programs to provide our students with a working social justice framework and to allow them, in every course, to discuss, process and construct an understanding of these disparities and work towards changing them. I have been teaching for over 30 years and the impact of education to change the unjust systems in our culture is real and present. We aim to turn out social justice thinkers and actors! We feel it is every teacher’s moral obligation to work for change and justice.
The banner hanging from Justice Hall states that “Together, we will succeed at changing the world.” I believe that. It is part of our mission and part of every student’s experience coming through our programs. What a blessing it is to work in a business where one of your primary goals every day is to make this world a better and a more just place for all children. Come and help us!
P.S. Join the Educators for Justice Club and be a social justice warrior!
Thomas Knestrict, Ed.D.
Director Early and Middle Childhood Education
Xavier School of Education
