In this episode, Kim talks with Dr. Sawsan Jaber, Founder of Education Unfiltered and High School English teacher in the Chicago area. They discuss, in-depth, how to get started bringing social justice conversations into your classroom, the value of vulnerability as an educator, and the power of technology as a tool for equity in all subject areas If you are interested in supporting teachers in having these kinds of conversations, this episode is for you!

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Show Notes

5 Things that Teachers Should Know When Doing Social Justice in the classroom

1. Start with you: your own beliefs, experiences, positionality. Start with self. You can’t start working with students before you work with yourself.
2. Social justice work needs to start with all stakeholders to be sustainable. It can’t have community impact if it’s happening in the classroom in isolation. How can I include all stakeholders in the conversation.
3. An activist scholar understands that teaching is not apolitical. There’s no way you can understand and fight against injustice without getting into politics. We’re not shaping students for tomorrow without talking about justice and social justice. We have to understand that we need to be able to immerse ourselves in understanding different injustices. Have to be advocates for eradicating injustice in all areas. Distributor of systemic injustices in education.
4. Misconceptions that if we’re cultural responsive, we’ve made. It’s just the foundation, should not be the end goal. Culturally responsive means that we’re giving students mirror, but it’s not going to create students that are going to change the status quo and become engaged citizens of the world who know how to navigate the world and change the world. Critical race theory. How can we build students who know what their rights are. How can we use CR to help students understand others, and navigate those worlds in order to change those for the better.
5. It is gray. It is ongoing. It is not linear. You will make mistakes. We all make mistakes. The biggest thing is to be able to take a step back, reflect on those mistakes and use them to better our work and mins

Something you’re excited about in terms of learning / learning innovation / intro to you as an education professional

Teach English. My experiences have fed into my vision of what education can look like in the classroom. English and Lang Arts is a subject where everyone can see themselves and find themselves within literature. I found myself in the literature I was reading. My mission is to help students find themselves in mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Going beyond the limitations of physical space to meet other people. If this isn’t going to make you a better person out there, discard it. My theme is social justice. Start with positionality.  Self into school community into larger community into outside world.

How do you start?

If you’re not a POC, you need to immerse yourself in those experiences.

Step 1: Vulnerability, how do the experiences you’ve had / haven’t had shape your world. If you don’t understand yourself there’s no way you can understand the students you’re looking at. 

Step 2: immerse yourself in the culture of your student demographic. You really need to know what you’re talking about beyond a textbook social media context. Make sure that you’re looking for resources and doing the work yourself, not relying on other people to teach you. 

Step 3: Understand that you will make mistakes. There’s no one workshop or book you’re going to ready that will give you all the answers. There’s always going to be a learning process, you’re never going to be able to stop learning in order to have these conversations in order to challenge your thoughts and your students thoughts. Give them the tools and passion to continue this over time.

Step 4: Think out of the box, get yourself comfortable, Be able to admit when it wasn’t the best approach, Be flexible enough to go back and replan and change your strategy, unlearn some of the things you’ve traditionally been taught. Be in a place where you can share that journey with kids

Step 5: Build community, comfortable saying things. Shaping culture and norms in the classroom. Intention to talk through issues. Better understand ourselves, teh world outside.

How are you using tech to shape these conversations?

Journaling with Google Docs. 5 min journal entry every lesson, shared only with Sawsan. No filter, no punctuation, just write. Two-way communication. These become therapeutic for the students, gives me a window into their thoughts and their relationships. I’ve learned so much about my kids so I can shape my teaching around who they are. Transformed my relationship with my students, an extra layer of who they are and what they’re thinking. Routine is comfortable for them and gets everyone into the mode of the classroom.

FlipGrid is my best friend. It’s given me the opportunity to mix my students together. Hearing from and getting to see the faces of 120 kids, vs the 20 kids they’re sitting in class with every day. End of the period is a response to a Flipgrid question. Listen to 2-3 peers and respond. 

Connect my students to other classes in other schools. More challenging because teachers had to use the same kind of essential questions and standards / expectations.

Podcasts: create the audio recording on their iPhone, music, can work with kids from other classes, so they found kids with similar views to work with them. Script. Touching on the sub sections of the subject. Thinking critically about topics and having core conversations with peers. Sharing with a larger audience made them really think about their word choice. Ongoing school podcast series, creating things from our students for our students.

TED Talks: for a unit on storytelling. Getting them comfortable sharing their personal story.

PSAs:

It’s not the fancy programs that you can use, it’s the ways you use them.

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Show Notes continued…

How do you bring tech into your classroom?

Accessibility is equity. Giving them access to learning beyond this 45 min period.

You can’t have equity in education without technology. It’s not a luxury. It’s a necessity. 

I can’t even start to compare the conversations we had 20 years ago to the conversations we’re having today. 

Rhetoric: essential life skill for kids to identify and use it. Look at a famous speech, and then create a piece of media using rhetoric and create something that speaks to you, that is passionate to you. Identify who that authentic audience is. Without even thinking about it you are able to embed and integrate these important skills that are college and career skills. 

Writing a speech is a lot more boring that creating one that’s live. Rationalize choices. Empowering

For us to deny the benefits of tech speaks to our own flexibility to adapt to best practices.

Our world is changing every single day, if we want to prepare these students for the future, we need to prepare them for any kind of person they might interact with. We need to make sure our students can have these conversations with anyone that doesn’t hurt them.

How are you so flexible?

Be vulnerable. Say “it might not work” I don’t have all the answers, I’ll never have all the answers. Start there and be comfortable there. Constantly observing other teachers. How acn I take this and apply it in a powerful way. As long as I know what my end goal is, I’m not afraid to take it to a new route and try new things. Being comfortable with that, I’m teaching my students to take those same risks. As the year progresses, they become a lot more willing to take those risks and then they’re thinking deeper, building community, taking risks. We have to model those things in our classroom, once those become norms it becomes a learning community within your classroom. Becomes a shared understanding, you’re setting a precedent for them. Collaboration with the kids, modeling those things, being comfortable not having all the answers. It’s a mindset shift.

Kids will respect you so much more when you say “I don’t know”. Letting go gives you more clout, lets you build relationships, lets them feel seen and heard. My students are willing to go with me wherever I go because they trust me.

What are you learning about

Just finished my PhD. Looking for my next focus. ELL. Every teacher needs to have a formal ELL background. I’m not the most tech savvy, with COVID, I need to expand my repertoire of skills there. Explore more integration of tech and how to use tech in a more equitable way. I want to make sure I am being as impactfully virtually with my students as I am face to face.

Build multiple strategies in order for me to glean as much information about my kids through tech as I do in face to face.

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