About
Schools for Social Justice connects research about social justice education, and experiential knowledge, to K through 12th grade schools for practical application. Schools are important sites of learning, and young people are absorbing much more than academic lessons. Through explicit and implicit messaging, schools are also sites where students are learning about social constructs such as race and class, about their own intersectional identities within these constructs, and how to treat others given dominate paradigms. At times this education takes place through environmental cues about socioeconomic status expectations (i.e. school supplies that parents are expected to produce or clothes and technology that students bring to school), and racial attitudes (i.e. the racial identity of characters represented in texts which denotes who is worth learning about, or the racial identity of teachers and administrators which communicates who has structural power in the school). When schools do not foster critical conversations about power and privilege, their silence sends the message that such topics are not worth having or appropriate for discussion.
Research on social justice education is available, but often gets stuck in academia.We believe it's important that schools have access to this wealth of information. At the same time, there is much to be learned through people's lived experiences and the knowledge that has been cultivated over generations. Schools for Social Justice works to connect both of these areas of knowledge with K - 12 schools to become more accountable to its students and community.
Schools for Social Justice offers a variety of services to help educational settings immerse
their students in social justice education.
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Online webinars
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Staff workshops & trainings
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Strategic planning
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Discipline policy review
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Models for social justice education implementation
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Resources
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Research summaries of SJE in practice
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Ongoing research projects