Social Justice in the Classroom

There is a teacher who is teaching in revolutionary ways. She wrote an article called "The Power of the Connected Classroom: Why and How I'm Teaching Social Justice". She is making the argument that the time is now and that we need to start at a young age teaching students that things like the Holocaust are happening today. She says that she teaches about the Holocaust and Rwandan genocide in her English classroom for more than just the interest in the stories. She also teaches them because it leads into talking about what is happening in our world today. People die every day in other countries because they are not given the proper medicines or because they are getting worked really hard in sweat shops every day because of unfair working conditions. This teacher asks her students: “what are you going to do about it?” She believes that the young people of today will influence our future and she is right. We need to make them aware of what is really going on in the world and where all our stuff comes from.

What she does is called “A week of immersion in the real world”. During this time she shows them the conditions of a sweat shop where most of their jeans come from. She also shows where bottled water and soda comes from. Through these observations students can learn what is going on out in the world beyond their everyday. We need to make an impact in a child’s life today with showing them what is going on in the world today. Maybe these kids can find a way to break free of what is going on in our world and bring it to a new way. A new way of living and a new way of thinking would change the world as we know it.