This document describes a social justice program for middle school students. It has them identify partner organizations working on social issues and engage with those groups through letter writing, interviews, and actions. Students document their work on a social media site and teach workshops about the issues. The program aims to narrow the distance between the classroom and real world issues of social justice and open possibilities for lifelong engagement on these topics. It is presented as having institutional impact, pushing students out of comfort zones, and being innovative while dependent on school support.

1. From the Classroom
to the World:
Inspiring Social Justice Activism
in the Middle School
Mark Silbebrerg, Middle School Principal
msilberberg@lrei.org - @silberbergmark - #sj-nysais

2. Collecting some stories on social justice work
taking place in our schools:
Scale, Risk, Innovativeness, and Difficulty

3. SCALE:
Gets at the institutional impact of the program
Left – “Safe” = ideas/program that happen in small pockets in
your school (i.e., in a unit, in a grade, etc.) they may serve
their stakeholders well, but don’t seem to have wider impacts.
Right – “Big” = ideas/program that are having an institutional
impact within and maybe across divisions and across
disciplines.

4. RISK:
Is the program pushing stakeholders out of their
comfort zones towards core school values?
Left – “Achievable” = student outcomes are predictable; hard to
differentiate work from different years; the students are engaged, but
the program is not really mission critical.
Right – “Outperforming” = we have some clear goals, but there is a fair
amount of flexibility in terms of design; we are learning with our
students; we’re all operating just outside of our comfort zones; the
program evolves with each iteration; failures are learning opportunities.

5. INNOVATIVENESS:
Is the program human-centered, collaborative,
prototype-driven and mindful of process?
Left – “Following” = we’ve been doing it for a long time; it feels comfortable;
no reason to rock the boat; the students are engaged, but we haven’t really
looked at the learning goals for a long time.
Right – “Leading-Edge” = there is a clear thinking/planning cycle: discovery/
empathy, interpretation, ideation, experimentation, evolution; there’s
potential to transform teaching and learning in ways that are mission
focused.

6. DIFFICULTY:
Is program nimble with low resource demands or
dependent on significant institutional support?
Left – “Easy” = ideas/programs that stakeholders can implement
without significant help in terms of institutional time and resources.
Right – “Difficult” = ideas/programs that are hard for individual
stakeholders or small groups of stakeholders to implement on their
own; significant institutional commitment is required to achieve
goals to implement.

7. Go to
http://tinyurl.com/nysais-sj to contribute
or use the post-it notes

8. 5th through
8th grade
context for
our social
justice
inquiry
work

9. 5th Grade:
Examine ancient civilizations through the lens
of archaeological inquiry.

10. What is civilization/culture?

11. Contemporary connection:
Social justice implications of modern
food production.

12. 6th Grade:
Exploration of Europe and Middle East
in the Middle Ages

13. Religion as lens for inquiry
Culture/civilization as dynamic process

14. Contemporary connection:
How does an understanding of historic
social justice issues inform our understanding of the
present condition?

15. 7th Grade:
Examines pre-colonial US history through
drafting of the Constitution

16. Cultures in contact:
Native Americans, Africans, Europeans
History as narrative - whose story is represented?

17. Contemporary connection:
Utopia vs.dystopia - How are the ideals expressed in the
Charters of Freedom reflected in our current American
society?

18. 8th Grade:
Exploration of Civil War though Civil Rights Era
around theme of "Choosing to Participate."

19. Power and politics as lens for inquiry
Who has power and how is power contested?

20. Our thematic exploration of individuals who had
"chosen to participate" raised a compelling
problem for us . . .

21. We had not created a meaningful context for
students to "choose to participate"

22. A starting place . . .

23. Students learn letter writing, phone calling,
email and interview skills that they use to
identify partner organizations

24. Some of our partners . . .
• New York Immigration • Housing Works
Coalition • Invisible Children
• Mercy Corps Action Center • Ishmael Beah Foundation
• Geoffrey Canada, • “It Gets Better" Project
• Promise Academy, Harlem • GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and
Children’s Zone Straight Education Network)
• UN Conference on the • The Innocence Project
Millennium Goals • CAPP (Child Abuse
Prevention Program)
• NYC Million Trees
• GEMS (Girls Education and
• Patricia McCormick Mentoring Services)
• SPARK • Global Kids
• Common Ground • Food Bank of New York
• Office of Disarmament
Affairs at the United Nations

25. Groups create web sites on our Elgg social
media site to document their work

26. They blog about their site visits, interviews and
their developing understanding of the issues.
Peers and partners comment on their posts.

27. They join in with and initiate actions to
support their partner organizations

28. They create PSA in their art class

29. They plan workshops to teach 5th-7th
graders about their issue for our annual
Social Justice Teach-In

30. And in the end . . .

31. Narrowing the distance between the
classroom and world beyond . . .

32. And opening possibilities for a life's work

33. Dialog with
Students
and
Teachers

34. Returning to the stories of social justice work
taking place in our schools:
Scale, Risk, Innovativeness, and Difficulty

35. From the Classroom
to the World:
Inspiring Social Justice Activism
in the Middle School
Mark Silbebrerg, Middle School Principal
msilberberg@lrei.org - @silberbergmark - #sj-nysais