Why teach social justice in the science curriculum?
Social Justice can and should reflect, in part, your student population. It is a place to start your lesson and/or curriculum development. Social justice is about what the daily life is for students at school, home, and in their communities. It is a place for students to ask questions that relate to their lives. For example: why is there so much asthma in my community? Why is this creek always dirty? Why can’t I walk or ride my bike to school? These are questions students can answer, research, understand, and even take action to change their situations. Students have a good sense of what is right or wrong, inviting these issues into the science curriculum can allow more student involvement, motivation, and ultimately care for their community and world.
My experience in fusing more social justice into my science teaching is a definite work in progress. I started teaching environmental education in the woods and then for the past 5 ½ years went to teaching 5th-6th grade Earth Science in public schools, as I wanted to teach more children in my community. While I would like to teach a more transformative approach, I am not there yet. Much of what I have been able to do is an additive and contribution approach due to teaching 50-minute classes and little planning time. My personal approach has been to do a little each year, more in my summers off, and never give up hope. The daily life of a public school teacher is under more and more pressure each year and with fewer funds to work with, our students need us more hopeful than ever.
“Science pedagogy framed around social justice concerns can become a medium to transform individuals, schools, communities, the environment, and science itself, in ways that promote equity and social justice. Creating a science education that is
transformativeimplies not only how science is apolitical activitybut also the ways in which students might see and use science and science education in ways transformative of the institutional and interpersonal power structures that play a role in their lives.” -Angela Calabrese Barton (from Teaching Science for Social Justice)
Social Justice: a Basic Framework
When thinking about social justice in your classroom, there are three basic approaches: The contribution approach (adding isolated facts/cultures in your curriculum), the additive approach (adding to the existing curriculum about an issue. This could be an extra lesson you would do and tends to be what I am able to do in the classroom), and the transformative approach (rethinking your curriculum so that the social justice issue(s) are at the center of what you think about and act on in the classroom or outside of the classroom.)
Salina Gray, another educator, (see PPT resource below) came up with a simple planning tool on how to include more social justice issues into your lessons:
1)What are the thematic/subject goal(s) and objective(s)?
2)What are the district/state standards you will focus on?
3)What culturally relevant currentor historical event(s) might spark student interest and engagement?
4)What popular media (music, video games, TV, magazines, internet…) might be relevant?
5) What EXPERIENCE, PROJECT,
or ACTIVITY could the students
engage in throughout and/or at the
end of the unit?
Lately I have been using the diagram below to think about adult workshops on social issues, but I think this can also be appropriate for younger grades. (From Educating for a Change from the Doris Marshall Institute for Education and Action.)
Difficulties with teaching social justice in science
By far the biggest problem I face is that I have no time to develop the lessons I want to create. Luckily the more I teach the same thing, the more I have time to devote to lesson planning, but it is never as much as I would like. The Georgia standards I teach are jam packed with concepts from Astronomy to Meteorology and there is nothing I can take out when NCLB test scores are at stake. My only solution is to do what I can (until NCLB is destroyed) and do it with as little stress as possible. I do a little more during the year, more in the summer, and keep building onto my lessons.
The other issue that is difficult for me is that the middle school I teach has MANY different cultural communities. African-American, Latino, white, and many refugee students from places in Asia and Africa. While the cultural diversity is wonderful, students are bussed in from MANY different communities. So when I speak of community in the classroom, it really does mean something different for everyone. If we want to clean up one community, that community does not reflect where all my students come from. My choice is to start where we are, in the classroom and down the hill to clean up our own creek. Students have responded very well to this and I am still working on ways they can take more ownership of their school community.
A problem I have always found in the South is having little support from my team or school for progressive teaching. Many teachers are not used to the ideas of social justice in the classroom. Teachers are also tired, over-worked, and want to go home and be with their families (like me!) My first choice was to go off campus and find any progressive minded teacher in the Metro-Atlanta area. We found each other at a NCLB conference and an Atlanta Social Forum workshop on Charter schools. We later formed, MAPS: Metro Atlantans for Public Schools (see cards below). The group has helped me to think of ways to approach teachers on social issues as well as give me hope of how we might change public schools for the better. Recently I have been able to find allies at my school through the creation of an Environmental Club and to my surprise someone started a Social Justice Club that I am also happy to work with.
Ideas and Resources
A lot of my experience is in 6th grade Earth Science since that, but could be fused with 6-8th grades and possibly some high school lessons.
I believe firmly in using what you have to teach. Each year we get $45 from our wonderful PTA, but that is never enough for what we want. So, I have had great luck with outreach to other groups. We teach hydrology, erosion, and water pollution so it made sense to use the creek behind our school to study, monitor through Adopt-a-Stream (offers free training and sometimes supplies to teachers to monitor creeks), and clean (Rivers Alive will help for creek clean-ups). Within the hydrology unit we can go further by asking who owns the water, what does privatization of water mean? And my favorite classroom discussion; is water a right? More sample lessons and resources found below.
Adding local data about air pollution in various local communities, graphs, articles on ethical issues in science, issues with environmental racism, and inviting speakers like from the Beehive Collective (see resources) to discuss the real cost of coal, are all additions or transformations that can take place in the classroom. I want my students to leave my room literate in science but also RESPONSIBLE for their knowledge and what they choose to do with it. Science has a lot of potential to reach children’s curiosity and personal connection to their world. Children deserve the tools to change this world for the better.
Thank you!
Jen Sauer
Clarkston, GA
MAPS: Metro Atlantans for Public Schools: