Connections to Social Justice Standards: Identity, Diversity, Justice, Action
Strategies:
1. Neighborhood Explorations
2. Connecting With Community Organizations
3. Integrated Classroom and Community Civic Spaces
Students benefit from family and caregiver knowledge and from community wisdom. Partnerships with community organizations can help extend classroom activities, provide additional support for students’ needs and add new perspectives to teaching material—all while sending the message that communities are valuable learning resources.
Neighborhood Explorations
Educators can connect classroom topics to historical or cultural features of students’ cities and neighborhoods. For example, Montgomery, Alabama, is home to many civil rights landmarks and monuments, important sites that can help students honestly reckon with our country’s history. Visiting sites like these can add richness to students’ curricular learning while honoring the experiences and the wisdom of the community. Teachers can also infuse local history and provide a place-based perspective on national events, including current events. Lessons that involve neighborhood explorations can also help students become more civically engaged.
Connecting With Community Organizations
Many communities have local organizations that engage in cultural activities, community service efforts or social justice advocacy. Community organizers are often happy to partner with schools, provide students with information and offer opportunities for students to participate in their projects. The article “Resources for Building Community Partnerships” from Edutopia can help you get started on building those types of relationships. The LFJ article “Community Organizing Uplifts Immigrant Students” provides examples of partnerships with community organizations that support students and families.
Youth-serving organizations are particularly important partners for educators and schools. With their understanding of local contexts, they tend to be strong at building relationships with young people and can be effective in supporting students holistically.
Connecting with community organizations has the added benefit of providing essential services and materials for students and families. For example, many community-based groups run back-to-school events that provide students with school supplies before the fall semester. Other organizations might run coat and jacket drives or provide food for families during school breaks. When educators and schools take the time to learn about what students and families need, they’re better equipped to identify the community partnerships that will make the biggest difference—educationally and materially.
Integrated Classroom and Community Spaces
In addition to encouraging students to get out into the community, it’s beneficial to invite community members into intergenerational discussions on topics that are of interest to students. Community members can contribute their knowledge of local contexts, while students can share their perspectives on local issues. These discussions foster greater intracommunity understanding and even improve organizing efforts.
As with other critical classroom conversations, it’s important to be mindful of power dynamics during the discussion. By creating norms for discussion and facilitating the conversation in a way that centers historically marginalized groups, educators can build an equitable space for dialogue. For more information on how to set up these conversations, review LFJ’s Let’s Talk! publication. Also, the LFJ article “Solidarity as Social and Emotional Safety” details a model of partnership that brought community wisdom into the classroom to share experiences and lessons on mutual aid, restorative justice and safety by design.
Guest speakers can help send the message to students that their community holds valuable knowledge. Teachers can invite community leaders, organizational representatives, and family and community members to speak about how their life or work experiences relate to social justice themes and classroom topics. Their connections to these topics may be personal, professional or both. If possible, allow time for questions and authentic discussion with the speaker.
