A lot of amazing stuff has happened to me since my last post! I have been thinking a lot about social justice in the classroom ever since I developed that unit on heteronormativity in quinceañeras.
So, I attended Cassandra Glynn and Beth Wassell's workshop on teaching culture through the lens of social justice at this years MaFLA conference. If you have not read their book, Words and Actions: Teaching Languages Through the Lens of Social Justice, it's a MUST buy. I am in the middle of reading it right now, and it's so unbelievably helpful!!
I also attended a session on the UN's Global Goals, and that really supplemented what I learned from Cassandra and Beth. There are social justice standards that are just a non-negotiable at this point. We have to be teaching this stuff because it's a necessity for the safety of our students, planet, etc.
This can be done with novice learners!
I had to put this in bold and underline it because it was a huge misconception that I had in my mind before. I was always under the impression that when we talked about the 3 Ps (Products, Practices, and Perspectives), that the "perspectives" part were more for upper-level students. I was so wrong. Perspectives need to be in every unit that we teach.
This summer, I did a training at Middlebury, and a professor said that the 3 Ps were antiquated because they don't teach students how to really interact with people from other countries. However, what I think was missing in this discussion was the social justice aspect of culture. These DO help students learn to criticize, admire, and interact with their culture and the culture of others.
My units:
I had a lot of thematic units designed that touched on some of the topics from the UN's Global Goals, but I was not going deep enough. What I realized was that all of my units contained content knowledge/factual information and tools for personal reflection, but what I was missing were the tools for critical analysis and the tools for action and social change. I was not having my students come up with/learn about any solutions to the problems that we were discussing. What a missed opportunity for social change!
I started new digital portfolios with my students *this will have to be a post of its own someday*. However, in part of the portfolio, students have to write things that they are passionate about. This was the suggestion of my department head, Jorge Allen, because many students in Andover have to do this for their capstone projects. My students are not doing their own capstones per se, but I figured I could start to develop units around their passions while incorporating a social justice lens.
MY STUDENTS' ANSWERS HAVE BEEN OFF THE HOOK! I thought they were going to write things like "I like videogames," which would've been totally acceptable, but they went so much deeper (even if they did say their passion was videogames). They were giving reasons why, adding statistics, thinking about others, etc. My heart was soaring!
The first one that stood out to me was from a 7th grader. He wrote that he was passionate about the environment but added that he is specifically passionate about tree conservation. He pointed out that our society is trying to move away from plastic straws by using paper straws...buuuuuut...we have to cut down trees to make those paper straws. *MIND BLOWN* Sometimes we think we are being environmentally friendly without thinking of other possible consequences of our actions.
BUT IS THAT NOT PERFECT FOR A SOCIAL JUSTICE UNIT?!?!
I sat down with two incredible science teachers at my school, Catie and Kayley, and they helped me begin the process of writing TWO units based off of this student's interest in trees. I had already had a unit on Puerto Rico and a particular bird in danger of extinction, so we zeroed in on that and made it a unit on human impact!
The other unit that we began to develop is a unit on global warming for 6th grade. The wonderful French teacher at my school and I were talking last week about how we hate teaching the "weather" unit. It just doesn't seem to move students up much in proficiency, and it's just not fun. So, I talked with her and another Spanish teacher at my school (the third Spanish teacher is away and we miss her!), and we are going to work on developing this unit on global warming together to add some value to our weather unit.
These two units really incorporate social justice in my opinion and cultural perspectives because they say a lot about human values. We often value our own needs over the needs of our planet or over the needs of others around us, but these problems can be solved.
The solutions! I cannot stress how important it is to not only discuss social justice issues, but to also discuss solutions with the students. When we discuss greenhouse gases, we will talk about solutions like eating less meat to produce less methane, etc. When we talk about human impact, we will talk about light pollution, the use of fossil fuels, pollution, etc., but then we will also discuss the solutions. I already bought my first silicone and metal straws in preparation for discussing the solution to plastic/paper straws brilliantly brought up by my student.
Also in the works is going to be a unit on animal cruelty; A LOT of students wrote about cruelty free products, pounds that kill dogs after 14 days of not finding a home, etc. But one step at a time, Timothy! 😉🤣
Conclusion:
These units are making me (and hopefully my students) a better person, and I am learning a lot in my research as I develop each unit. It feels so good to be excited about teaching a new unit! Thematic units are a lot of work and require a lot of research and time, but I really love the idea of not teaching the same old stuff year after year. As the world changes, my curricula will continue to change with it.
Thanks for taking the time to read this! I'm a happy camper!
Timothy
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