Social Justice and English Language Learning

"The world becomes what you teach."

I believe that a good educator should not only presents facts and content knowledge, but help to strengthen students' sense of justice, citizenship, and empathy. Indeed, helping students understand themselves and their worlds often means stepping away from text books and confronting current social and political realities.

When teaching a home-room class, it can be easy to find times to discuss these issues (if they are not already integrated into your curriculum). Read-alouds, holiday parties, class conflicts, recess, bathroom trips, can all serve a higher purpose.

During my limited blocks of language instruction, however, this task has proved more challenging. Students have less language to work with in explaining and discussing issues and also have a variety of cultural contexts.

So while this is a challenge that I'm still working to address, here are some ways I've tried to tackle social justice in my ELL classroom:

1. Featuring people of color predominantly in my lessons. Many of my students have learned that White= American, White=English speaker, White=leader, actor, singer, etc. I try to give them a more realisitic picture of society- in which people of color play a huge part.

2. Working with key phrases. This past week, my students learned statements of ability (think: I can run, I can jump, etc.) I seized the lesson as a chance to discuss gender roles. Students were ask to make a list of what they have heard that boys and girls can or cant do. I gave some examples of stereotypes as well- "Boys can run fast," "Girls can't play sports." I asked them what they thought and watched as they talked (sometimes in Korean) with each other about the realities of gender differences, Eventually, we made posters with one surprising statement about gender on each. The boys: "Boys can wear pink," was maybe less inspired, but I was amazed with the girls who eventually said, "Can we just say, girls can do everything?" Yes, yes you can. :-)

3. Dialogue. I'm currently working on a pen pal exchange program between my friend's 2nd grade class in Harlem and my after-school club. I'm hoping that this exposure to new ways of thinking and ideas will help both groups have a better understanding of our world.