Tag Archives: class

GUEST POST: Sofie Wolthers, the International Panel on Social Progress: Let Injustice Drive Your Passion

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Let Injustice Drive Your Passion

Whether you’re passionate about racial issues, gender equality, poverty, or working conditions, the fight for social justice always comes with moments of discouragement. Something as simple as watching the news after an already exhausting work day can make you feel empty, draining the motivation out of you  I have experienced this discouragement, and continue to regularly. This feeling remains part of the battle we fight as social activists. Not only are we fighting a battle for equality and justice within the world, but we are working to find inspiration around us and within ourselves that gives us the desire to pursue change.

Who am I? I am a young adult living in New York City. I was born in Brazil and am the youngest of four. When I was three, my parents moved my family to the United States with hopes to raise their children in a safer environment than our community in Brazil offered us. One afternoon, burglars broke into our home and robbed us of our valuables. I was too young to remember the incident but I know that the thieves stole more than just our things–they disrupted our peace of mind.

Brazil hasn’t changed much since we left. The gap between the rich and poor remains remarkably grand. Instead of changing public policies and creating programs to better life for the Brazilian people, the government, saturated with corruption, continues to enrich themselves.

Living in Plantation, Florida, I grew up going to school in a uniform. My parents no longer worried whether my siblings and I would get mugged on our way home from school. Sadly, in other area’s around the U.S., this fear is a reality.  

During holiday seasons, we would return to Brazil. My parents constantly reminded my older brothers to keep an eye on my sister and I when walking in the streets, and to never let us wander alone. The encounter I am about to describe has happened on multiple occasions and continues to happen every time I return to Brazil, but this particular instance remains with me.

I must have been about eight years old. At this point, I had been living in the U.S. for over half my life. I was with my aunt and little cousin in the car. I don’t remember where we were going, but I remember the heat and humidity that day was unbearable. The AC was blasting in the car. We came to a stop at a red light, and a group of three kids ran in front of our car. They were dressed in old, tattered circus costumes. I supposed they wanted to look like clowns, but the scene wasn’t comical at all.

One of the boys didn’t have shoes on. The eldest looked to be about 13, and the youngest was around five. In the minute and a half that my aunt, my cousin, and I waited for the light to change, these three children performed a perfectly choreographed routine. They were dancing and juggling pins with smiles on their faces. I was the same age as the boy in the middle. We made eye contact. I thought to myself, “My parents never let me play in the streets in Brazil.”

After the routine, they split up and walked around cars asking for some sort of donation. My aunt said she wished she had a spare sandwich or some crackers to give them (she often brings snacks around with her for situations like this). I asked her why she doesn’t give them some change, maybe just enough for the little boy without shoes to buy a cheap pair of flipflops. She explained that only a small portion of the money they collect is theirs to keep and that close by their “boss” is watching.

We were all around the same age, but the circumstances we were born into differentiated us. These little boys worked in order to survive. They wore clownish outfits and practiced under-appreciated routines instead of learning to read and write. They were exploited. This is the reality of children all over the world.

Every child deserves their innocence. Education, healthcare, clean drinking water–these are all human rights. Here are some facts provided by UNICEF: more than 85 million children are subjected to physical labor exploitation and trafficking, 57 million children are out of school worldwide, and the commercial sex trade exploits two million children worldwide.

So, why care about social justice? Why do we try to make a difference in the lives of others if we are not personally responsible for their fate? Because the responsibility is a moral obligation. By remaining ignorant to the realities of others, we sustain the problem.

I work for the International Panel on Social Progress, a recently-developed panel that seeks to solve societal issues using the research of sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and social activists from around the globe.

In a recent interview with an IPSP panel author, philosopher, and Columbia University Professor, Akeel Bilgrami, Bilgrami talks about how each one of us thinks in two individual frames of thought: our individual frame and our public frame. Psychologists call this “the frame problem.” It is a natural reaction for us to feel empathy towards an issue like child labor when faced with a direct encounter. In that moment, we may feel anger and a desire to change a societal reality.

Unfortunately, our individual frame of thought quickly disregards these feelings, accepting the situation as a fact of life. We go on with the rest of our day and the problem of child exploitation remains.

It doesn’t have to, though. How can you make an impact? Stay informed and aware of the societal problems around you, talk about them with friends and family. Get in contact with NGOs that aid the societal issues that you are passionate about. Take action. Are you taking part in societal progress, or are you complying with injustice?

Children are our future–get involved with UNICEF. Start a high school club or take initiative on campus: High School and College.

You can also check out some of the videos I shot and edited that feature the authors in the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP). Learn how they are taking action towards social change within their fields of research. Like us on Facebook and follow us on twitter! 

Informative Videos:

Sofie Wolthers is a social activist and journalist specializing in photography and videography. She is currently working for the International Panel on Social Progress. She is a senior at Loyola University of Chicago, where she is Vice President of her school’s UNICEF chapter. She was born in Brazil, but has lived in the United States most of her life. Sofie believes in social change, social progress, and equality for all. Contact: sofiewolthers@gmail.com

The Benefits of Annotation: Students Interacting with Texts

. For Teachers & Teacher Researchers, Lesson Plans . , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

One of the hardest things I struggle with as a teacher is preparing students for standardized tests — it is both a pedagogical and a moral struggle. On one hand, I disagree with standardization; how can humans be standardized? On the other, I understand a form of accountability is needed in schools. There is an entire blog entry I could write on standardized tests, but this one is about how to help students improve their reading skills, which, in turn, will help them receive higher scores on said tests.

Based on the data I have collected from my own classes, the hardest standard for students to master involves textual analysis:

ELACC11-12RL1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.

I believe this standard is so difficult because it requires abstract thought. Not only do students have to read and understand a text, they must also be able to critique it, make justifications based on its content and analyze underlying meanings. It is not enough to merely read texts and answer questions, students need to read actively and interact with texts as they read.

In order to encourage interactive reading, my collaborators and I facilitate textual annotation. Even as I read for my graduate courses, I understand the text better if I keep running notes on its content — including writing on the pages themselves. If it helps me, surely it will help my students. Of course, just telling students to annotate does nothing. When I first started doing this, I merely received texts back covered in highlighter marks. Instead, I like to begin with prompts for annotations inserted into the texts we provide.

For instance, we read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Dream speech. This was one of the first texts we annotated this year, so I tried to guide their annotations by providing them within the text (click to get a MS Word attachment): MLKDreamSpeech+Annotation. As you can see, the questions call students to think critically about the text as they read, as well as respond to it as they read. It is my opinion that this action allows them to understand the text on a more critical level, as well as recall significant events from the text more readily than had they read it only.

As far as what we did with the text, we used it (as well as The Declaration of Independence) as the groundwork for our social justice unit (more lessons from that unit to come). Instead of reading the text as a class, we watched it:

I found the process of listening, watching, and annotating this text helped students create a strong foundation for the unit, allowing them to grasp the difficult standard more easily on their own, once annotations were no longer provided.

…food for thought!

 

What to do about George Zimmerman…

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Where do I begin?

When my collaborator and I began planning this semester, we were not sure what we wanted to teach about per se, but we knew we had to discuss Trayvon Martin. We could not ignore him — his murder was plastered all over the internet, his name came up in most conversations; his iconic, hoodied picture was immortalized on our students’ T-shirts — Trayvon’s story had to be discussed, if for nothing else but to understand tragedies that happen not only in the literature we read, but also in the world around us.

Fast forward to Zimmerman’s verdict and the chaos that followed (more on lesson plans later):

We watched this video as a class. I remember the portion of his speech that stood out most to me:

You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.

There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me — at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.

And I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear. The African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws — everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.

Whether you agree or disagree with our president’s political agenda, there is incredible honesty in these words. They cracked open my heart and touched me in a way I thought impossible — in a way that allowed me to see the situation of a person whom I cannot relate to on a literal scale no matter how hard I try because of the privilege I was born with — a privilege of fitting naturally into the normative societal scale of acceptance because of the color of my skin.

I began to understand this concept more after reading Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. What struck me most is that, before I began to consciously think of these ideas, I never thought about them. Sure, the sentiment is simple, but no matter how obvious it is to me now, I still never consciously paid attention to my situation in life before I was told to, so, I guess that is why I am sharing my revelations with you now.

So, back to George Zimmerman: Zimmerman is Charged with Aggravated Assault. No matter how hard we try to close the wounds that have been opened by the Trayvon Martin trial, they becomes continuously reopened. After the most recent news broke on Zimmerman, I began seeing this picture circulating the internet:

Image

While my initial reaction is to roll my eyes, as this meme is making light of a heavy situation, there is truth here. According to Malco (2013), “race matters in this country are the paralysis of the American people.”  In other words: when issues regarding race come up, we either 1. talk ourselves in circles, going nowhere or 2. ignore matters of race altogether. Sure, this is a silly meme which is not meant to be taken seriously, but the sentiment here is very serious, and something which should not be silenced further.

So, to answer my original question: what do we do with George Zimmerman? My answer is: I don’t know, but we cannot ignore him — to do so would be like slapping Trayvon in the face. However, we also cannot give into the media’s ploys to make money off of his demise. 

JJW

What is in a name?

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There is so much in a name. That’s why, when the prompt for my site tag and URL came up, I froze. I knew I wanted a site where I could document what I was teaching and where I could share my classroom reflections. I wanted a site that would store the lessons I found to be successful and analyses of possible reasons why others failed. But, I also wanted this site to encourage others to teach with their students in mind.

So much of teaching now is political. If money did not rule education before, it surely does now. After No Child Left Behind, it seems like, through standardizing education, we have left everyone behind. The people who run educational institutions are policy makers, Pearson, and McGraw-Hill — not necessarily teachers, administrators and each school’s community. I’m not saying that schools were perfect before NCLB, but I don’t think the current state of our educational system is working.

Therefore, I have chosen to fight for my kids. I’m not going to break laws. I’m not going to ignore policies or standards. However, I believe there is a way to make the standards apply to my classes (not the other way around). My kids come first and if I teach with them in mind, I am doing right by them. To me, this is every teacher’s duty — it’s a duty of social justice. Not only do most teachers perform acts of social justice every day, I believe they should be teaching it in their classes.

So. That’s where the site name came from. Teaching Social Justice is meant to inspire me, my students, and (hopefully) others to step up to the activism calling us. Sometimes it just involves a class, sometimes it is an action within one’s self, and sometimes social justice creeps into every aspect of our lives. That’s where I’m at right now. Education has become so political, I guess it’s my turn.

Best,

JJW

JoLLE — My First Conference Experience

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The Journal of Language and Literacy Education held their first annual conference last February, which also happened to be the first conference I had ever attended. The theme of the conference was “Activist Literacies.” This year, the conference theme is “Literacy for/and Social Justice: Inspire, Engage, Create, Transform,” and I am presenting. This website is actually a tool I plan to use at the conference, where I will discuss how I combined current events with standards-based historical texts to build a relevant curriculum for my classes. I was especially inspired by JoLLE’s special issue after their first conference, which featured articles on the same theme as the conference, many of which written by those who presented. Check it out!

Hip Hop-spiration

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Before embarking on my “journey for social justice,” I read an article by Tina Love (shown above) called “I See Trayvon Martin”: What Teachers Can Learn from the Tragic Death of a Young Black Male. This article acts as the foundation to the lesson plans I have made this year — so much of Love’s (2013) discussion relates directly to my classes. Here are some of my notes/responses to the text itself:

  • Love makes known the stereotypes that are deeply rooted in American society, and therefore, in our schools. One misconception of young Black males is their “attitude.” I, too, was very ignorant when I first began teaching, to the Black culture, as I grew up in a mostly white area (Northeast Georgia). However, college quickly opened my eyes to multiculturalism, and teaching in a very diverse school has changed my attitude toward the misconceptions of Black culture altogether.
  • According to Love, “Hip Hop swag serves as the perfect example. It is more than just a way of body movement and projections of coolness, it is an epistemological aim to engage others with confidence, likability, charm, cleverness, and resolve. Hip Hop swag is standing one’s ground” (p. 3). What a beautiful way to describe many of my students! While some may see Hip Hop swag as being “cocky,” or “apathetic,” this definition really gets to the heart of the matter: it’s a way of life, a way of being.
  • I agree with Love that “Too often, teachers make judgments concerning Black male students having nothing to do with their intellectual ability and everything to do with stereotypes, assumptions, and fear” (p. 3-4). I have fallen victim to this way of thinking in the past, but there are ways to battle normative ideas, and Love discusses a few of these in her article. One of the ways is through education and constantly educating yourself and your students. I am trying to do this through my critical pedagogy project (this website and my lesson plans), and I feel I am learning every bit as much as my students are. I only hope I am battling racial stereotypes and never perpetuating them (J. Whitley, Scholarly Notes, November 12, 2013).

I am currently reading Love’s book, Hip Hop’s Li’l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South. While I am not finished with it, yet, I am already inspired by Love’s work with these six middle and high school girls. There is a cool interview about this book on YouTube, and Dr. Love’s discussion begins at 16:00. Here is Dr. Love’s YouTube stream about her work last year at a local elementary school.

As you can see, I have been inspired by Tina Love’s work, and I feel like it would be selfish not to share it.