What Are The Challenges Of Teaching For Social Justice

1178 Words3 Pages

Through the courses that I have taken thus far, I have learned about and experienced many rewards of teaching for social justice. However, I have also learned about the challenges of teaching for social justice, such as mismatches, racial stigmas, and avoiding oppressive teaching, to name a few. From course readings, the dispositions, and real-life situations, I have been able to grasp the understanding of being a teacher for social justice. The problem of mismatches among children in the classroom is something that is very prevalent today. Jelani Jabari explains this prevalence with the definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result” (Jabari, 2013). Teaching every student in the same way …show more content…

Teachers for social justice should be aware of the challenge of teaching in an anti-oppressive way. Unknowingly, teachers may be teaching in a very oppressive way, and it could either be offensive and/or change the way a student views themselves. For example, when I was in school, there were always examples used for situations and stories told in Math or Reading class. These stories often were about a Caucasian male who owned some company and made an amount of money. On the other hand, we would always hear or read about a girl named Tanisha, Latisha, or Tameka, that stayed home with her children and cooked for them. When I look back on this, I am able to reflect and see that it is still happening in classrooms today. I never thought much of it as a child, but it definitely had an impact on the way that I viewed the world around …show more content…

By reflecting on my experience as a child, I was able to clearly ask myself, “Does this teaching method affect the oppressed students in my classroom, and if so, how?” As mentioned before, I had a student that struggled with math and writing. This student, along with about 3 other students in her class, was a Black female. Most of their writing prompts consisted of content that was all about a Caucasian male that went into space, or did something with his wealthy, loving family. Besides the fact that these girls cannot relate to these types of prompts, it also leads them to believe that women don’t often do big things like going into space or become wealthy with loving families. Although I never had the chance to teach a full class in an anti-oppressive way, I have made sure that I take every student’s culture, ethnicity, ability, class, and language into consideration when teaching/mentoring.
Being a teacher for social justice is more than just making sure you include all of your students in your discussions. It is being aware of the injustices that your students may have faced, are already facing, or may face in the future. With this awareness, as teachers, we should be able to reflect on what we know, and respond by using our resources to apply it to the classroom.

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