Nick Fernald

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Teaching Resource: History for Social Justice Project

 

What is it?

• This an individual project in which students will research a specific social justice-related topic that interests them, analyze how it relates to a historical event or time period in history, and convey that information in a way that they see fit.

 

Where did you find this resource?

• I found this resource on the Edutopia website under the topic of Social Studies. The specific website can be found here.*

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• This resource was created by Michael Hernandez, a Cinematic Arts and Broadcast Journalism teacher in Los Angeles, California.

 

What will students do?

• This project is broken up into four essential parts: awareness, choice, voice, and advocacy and aid.

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• In order to introduce this activity to students in the class, the teacher will facilitate different activities in class to help raise students’ about particular issues that interest them.

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• Then, students will a topic that interests them and start researching.

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• Once they have done some preliminary research, they will start to think about how they want to convey their , or means of communicating the information they discover to other people.

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• They could use blogs, social media, video and multimedia storytelling, or any other means that they see fit.

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• Finally, through , students will convey different ways that students can get involved in the cause if they so choose.

 

Who could use this in their classroom?

• With some slight adjustments, this activity could be appropriate for both middle and high school subjects.

 

Why did you choose it?

• Through this activity, I think that students will be able to grapple with and gain a better understanding of complex social justice issues. They will also be able to understand these issues through different perspectives and make connections between history, economic, sociology, and other subjects.

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• I thought that this activity would provide students with an opportunity to research topics that interest them.

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• I would hope that through this activity, students would feel inspired to continue their research or even learn about other social justice issues or topics.

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• I also think that what makes this activity great for students is that it allows for flexibility.

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• They can choose their own topic and can decide how best to convey their information, which I think is a fun way to learn.

 

What are its weaknesses or limitations?

• I think that one big weakness might be that it may allow for flexibility. I could potentially get students who say that no topics are of interest to them, or that they just don’t want to do the activity.

  • To make the execution of this activity better, I would work with students to narrow the focus of their topic.

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• I also think that a potential limitation to this could be that students might not be incorporating as much history, and instead focus on only the social justice topic that they selected for their project.

  • I could also improve this activity by having students think of a historical event that interests them first and then trying to connect it to a present-day topic or event.

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• There is also the potential that students may not feel comfortable choosing an issue that they feel passionately about.

  • I would work to create an environment in my classroom that was safe and inclusive before introducing an activity like this.

 

*Citation: Hernandez, M. (2012). Social Justice Projects in the Classroom. Retrieved July 7, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/social-justice-projects-in-classroom-michael-hernandez.