Social Justice Starting With Teachers

The article I read was titled Promoting Social Justice in an Urban Secondary Teacher Education Program written by Monica Medina, Anastasia Morrone and Jeffery Anderson. It was published in The Clearing House and I think it's important because in order to...incorporate social justice into our classrooms when working with students, we have to first address it as pre-service teachers.

The definition of social justice that this article uses is "social justice involves 'inspiring, working with and organizing others to accomplish together a work of justice...that primarily involves the good of others'" (pg. 208). The argument that these authors make is a strong one for university education programs to make transformations to address social justice as part of training.They worked with Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (yes this is the name of the school. IUPUI) and how their four semester block Learing to Teach/Teaching to Learn program delves into topics of diversity and culture. They do an activity where they are assigned either a dominant or minority group (primo or segundan). The dominant group is attempting to gain a grant from a fictitious foundation and has "the power to determine the development of a minority school and community, but they must collaborate with each other in order to receive the grant money." It helps them identify how their personal frame of reference negatively impacts others.

Another activity they complete is called the Kozol Project. They begin by reading Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol and identify five passages that they found meaningful and write a reflection of them, and they share with their peers. Then they are grouped into small teams and are asked to research the "community's assets." They develop presentations on various aspects of the community in attempt to "discourage a deficit perspective of the school and surrounding community."

Projects like these are what the authors suggest help pre-service teachers understand the diversity in future classrooms. Many of these pre-service teachers had the opportunity to critically reflect on their own views of teaching and social justice (209). If future teachers get the chance to develop their understanding of race, class, and ethnicity early in education programs, they will be able to actively engage their own students in the classroom in discussions of social justice (pg 209).