Social justice in the classroom

Social justice needs to be a part of the classroom always and forever. The idea of doing what is right by the students should never fall to the wayside. To me, social justice is the practice of differentiated instruction and enacting on practices that are both interesting and relevant to the students. As future teachers, we need to be able to link our work to current, real-life situations in order for students to relate. We need to consider the breakdown of the community in which we are teaching and how that affects student performance. For instance; local slang, community diversity, signs of respect, and familial ties are all going to affect a students performance in some way, but if we as teachers prepare our lessons with a knowledge of our community, we will be better able to benefit our students and build stronger teacher-student relationships.

Social justice also means keeping things authentic in the classroom.Providing students with pointless busywork does nothing and results in no measureable amount of learning. This also ties back to keeping students engaged, because if a lesson or assessment is more real and genuine, students are more likely to put their full effort into that assessment. For instance, My master English teacher will often organize a field trip to a local community theater and have the students watch a play. Afterwards, they get to ask the actors questions about the play and about how they develop character. In this way, the students gain a better understanding of character development and how this can apply to a novel or short story. 

Social justice is a necessity. It's beneficial for students, it can help out a teacher, and it can make education a fun and relatable experience when executed properly.