Social Justice Talk: Strategies for Teaching Critical Awareness

We all have the intention of using our classroom to envision a better world, but what gets in our way? Our uncertainty about how to discuss implicit and systemic bias in our classrooms is one of the reasons we avoid this necessary work. In Social Justice Talk, Chris Hass, along with his colleagues Nozsa Tinsley, and Tiffany Palmatier, detail how to facilitate rich discussions that disrupt the harmful social beliefs and practices we and our students are immersed in every day.

The first chapter dives into an important first step, knowing yourself, while the third chapter stresses the importance of knowing your students. Other critical topics include:

• Classrooms that center on social critique
• How children navigate diverse perspectives
• Using issue-based literature
• Placing social justice at the core of the Morning Meeting
• Supporting students to speak up
• Helping students move from social justice talk to action.

Each chapter is filled with vignettes, transcripts, and video clips from real classrooms and families that offer realistic expectations and models of what we can expect and hope for when we take on this work.