As mentioned in the article, “Five Essential Components for Social Justice Education” by Hackman, “The goal of social justice education is full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs” (2005). According to the SARC website, 75.2% of the school is socioeconomically disadvantaged and 87.6% of the school is Hispanic or Latino. That being said, we know that the majority of the students at Sunset Elementary are a minority group. Like mentioned in the intersectionality video, our students are at a crossroads with race and ethnicity on one side and socioeconomic status on the other. As stated in the article “Why Social Justice in Schools Matter,” written by Brenda Alvarez, “Bringing social justice into schools shines a spotlight on all sorts of important societal issues—from the myriad reasons that lie beneath the deep disparity between the suspension rates of black and white students to how current U.S. immigration policy separates families and violates student rights” (2019). This is a current issue that is actively affecting our students. Since our students and their families are predominantly Hispanic or Latino, and many families immigrated to the United States, it is something that is relevant to this school. Many parents and students themselves are scared of sending their children to school as we constantly hear about new rules and regulations that no longer work to protect our students. Many of our students’ families are Spanish speaking families. Getting to know our students and their families and providing them with assurance that they will be safe at our school and giving them resources so that they can have better knowledge and updates on the matter at hand will be a great way to help. One thing that can be done is that we can write a letter to the president and the secretary of homeland security to educate them on how the enforcement of immigration laws in or around school campuses has created a fear in our students, undermining the core principles that we have set at our school to keep our students safe in an environment where they will feel welcomed, supported, and free to learn. Social justice in education helps to ensure that all students have equal access to quality education. Regardless of their background or circumstances, all students deserve to receive a quality education.
Sunset Elementary is a Spanish dual immersion school. According to the CA School Dashboard website, 27.2 % of the students at the school are English Learners. That is more than one-fourth of the school that has a different language as their first language. Rather than trying to push out that first language in order for them to learn English, it is important that we embrace it along the way as they learn English. In order to be effective in doing this, we must promote culturally sustaining pedagogy strategies in our classrooms. Culturally sustaining pedagogy aims to allow students to maintain their identities while engaging in learning by incorporating students’ cultural backgrounds and languages into the classroom. One way that I would make sure that I am creating an environment in which students from all different backgrounds can thrive and flourish is by implementing norms that will pave the way for this to take place and tying lessons into the students' varying family traditions, languages, holidays, folktales, etc. We must find ways to be culturally responsive and set norms such as “be respectful” and “be responsible” to help create an inclusive environment where students will feel like they belong. If students know that they must be respectful with one another, they will be open to the different cultures that aren’t like their own. If students know that they are to be responsible, they will be taught that this includes being responsible with their words, actions, and materials or equipment. To ensure that we are being culturally responsive, when putting up and showing the norms, we may include them in the varying first languages of our students. If images of people are included within the norms, we must make sure that the people are representing people of different backgrounds and skin tones.
When providing the norms to our students, we can enforce them by saying them aloud, providing images of the correct behavior, and even acting out the correct behavior. Since 27.2% of our students are English learners, the use of images and visuals is very important for them to be able to correlate words with objects, people, or things. When providing instruction, using gestures, different materials, and relevant lessons will hen students with their engagement and understanding of concepts. Not everyone learns the same way, so providing a variety of teaching strategies into lessons will ensure that we are catering to everyone’s needs as much as possible.
A challenge that I encountered while completing question number one was that I was finding it difficult to see myself bringing up some of the more sensitive, but still very relevant social justice issues in our community to kindergartners or first graders. Taking the example that I used, for instance, how would I bring that up to really young children? Maybe through the help of a book? I haven’t looked into if there is a book regarding that or not, but that is something that I will be looking into.