As I near the end of my term of coursework with my ten week practicum on the very close horizon,  I find myself reflecting on my teacher inquiry and the process that helped me arrive at this point in time.  Though the process was daunting, ambiguous, and vague at times, I found that when issues came to a head throughout, I had moments of clarity and things slotted into a logical place and pointed me in the next logical direction. My mood during this term definitely reflected the process of my inquiry, which I found interesting as well. These are all things to keep in mind as I continue my teaching practice!

In the course of researching my inquiry question “What does activism look like in the K-3 classroom?”, I noticed my notes were organizing themselves into several categories, and this helped me frame my presentation in a way that I found interesting, engaging and helpful to teachers who are interested in a social action approach to social justice education. Below you’ll find my presentation embedded, but here is a short summary for your reference:

Six Considerations for Teachers Who Are Passionate About Social Action in the Classroom

1. We must define, or redefine, social justice and social action
2. K-3 children are aware of social injustice and are able to make connections between the way things are and possible reasons why.
3. One of the biggest challenges to incorporating social action into the classroom is teacher fear, which stems from a lack of knowledge or engagement with social issues, curriculum problems and the possibility of conflicts with parents.
4. The various diversities that students have (race, gender, socioeconomic status, etc) are huge factors in a student’s ability to and desire for engagement with social issues.
5. Engaging in critical literacy as a cross-curricular exercise can help lay the groundwork for social action in the classroom.
6. The best way to incorporate social action into schools is to base it in the school and immediate community, and the relationships that make up that community.

Number 4 is the inquiry statement that most reflects where I want to focus my research on in the future, as I was constantly surprised by the statistics surrounding diversity and acceptance of social justice in children, and I believe it has bigger implications for society as a whole. In the study of students from the midwest United States mentioned in my presentation, socioeconomic status and race both had an impact on a student’s ability to understand social justice issues in critical literature. It found:

• Students with a higher socioeconomic background were more likely to depict poverty in a positive light, or “exhibit a lack of awareness of the poor.”
• Black or biracial students were more likely than white to demonstrate a negative outlook of poverty.
• In both cases, the results reflect the children’s life experiences.

This is something I’ve been wondering about. As a TC in a low socioeconomic school, my students are more aware and engaged with social injustices like poverty because they live it every day. It’s almost like I’m preaching to the choir, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because young children still need help to process complex issues like this and I should encourage the consideration of other perspectives in all students regardless of background. My new focus question, then, is would the importance of teaching social justice to young children increase proportionally with the socioeconomic status of my students?

I’m constantly thinking about how I can translate my inquiry question into my practice, and I’m finding it difficult to imagine how this will manifest during a ten week practicum, especially since this kind of thinking has not been a part of the classroom culture. Since I’m doing a pond studies unit, we will be exploring issues of environmental justice, specifically access and availability of fresh water, with my grade 2-3s, and a big part of that will be looking critically at current social action around this issue and possibly designing our own social action campaign. In the future, social justice and action will be the overarching scope of my  entire school year and I’ll be able to utilize student inquiry to focus on issues that are most relevant and important to them.

This is not the end of my inquiry; inquiry is more of a search for more questions than a search for answers. With the feedback from my peers, which was both encouraging and helpful, I have a direction to go in and a renewed desire to incorporate social justice education into my regular practice.