Advocacy
Students have knowledge of injustice in the world, have informed opinions about it, and know that their voice and actions have value. They can advocate for themselves and others.
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When students are empowered to use their individual and collective actions and voices to advocate for themselves and others, they are able to ignite positive change within the community and world they live in. Helping students become advocates for social change means that I need to provide opportunities for them to connect their academic knowledge and skills with resources and activities that help them have their voices heard. Creating a space for students to explore, reflect, and act upon injustices that directly impact their community is a crucial component of supporting the development of advocacy skills. In my classroom, I work together with my students as they learn and act upon their knowledge of injustices.
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Above all, student’s viewpoints, ideas, and experiences about real-world issues that do not have answers need to be heard and validated. When their voices are heard, they understand the value of their knowledge and personal experiences. It is my ultimate goal to equip them with the skillset and confidence they need in order to advocate for what they believe in.
Click the following images below for evidence about how my students use their individual and collective assets to positively impact the community and world they live in.
Writing about Injustices to Take Action
Inside my classroom, students are held to rigorous academic standards that will help create opportunities for them upon graduation. However, in addition to having a strong base of English language arts content knowledge, students need to have the capability to apply this learned knowledge to their already existing experiences. To help students connect how they can use their content knowledge to effectively advocate for themselves and others, I had them write to someone in power about an injustice they felt passionate about. After students participated in mini-lessons, discussed their opinions and viewpoints in small groups, and analyzed speeches and persuasive texts, they used their writing to communicate informed opinions. Communicating informed opinions to an authentic audience helped them effectively advocate for the systemic injustices they felt a sense of urgency to change. Below you will see evidence of how I initiated a conversation about real-world injustices, how students used their voice to engage in advocacy, and how students followed-through with their actions.
Initiating the Conversation
Before students could act as a catalyst for change, they needed to have a sense of ownership over the topic they were going to advocate for. I first listened to what real-world injustices interested students by creating a Google Form. After students reviewed the various injustices, they selected what they wanted to advocate for. While students were reviewing the injustices, there were example issues included. For example, when reading "Civil Rights" students read "racial inequality, fair access to education, and voting rights".
Throughout this project, it was crucial to me that students had the opportunity to build background knowledge and connect their personal experiences to an injustice that directly impacted their life. Therefore, getting feedback directly from students allowed me to narrow down the topics so students were able to write about something they personally felt passionate about.
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From the feedback I received from students, I narrowed down the topics to immigration rights, student rights, gender inequality, and poverty.
Results from the Google Survey:
Developing Informed Opinions: Student Work Samples
After students selected what overall topic they wanted to read and write about, they began building their background knowledge. To introduce the topic to students, they read a persuasive speech that outlined an injustice related to the topic. For example, students who were reading about gender inequity read a speech given by Gloria Steinem on the Equal Rights Amendment. Reading speeches helped students understand how individuals were already advocating for the issues they felt passionate about. In addition to reading speeches, students read pro and con articles related to their topic. Reading pro and con articles about the topic allowed students to see multiple perspectives. It was empowering for students to see opposing viewpoints because it helped strengthen their already existing opinions.
Reading this speech helped this student build knowledge about the Equal Rights Amendment and what has been done in the past to bridge the gap between men’s and women’s rights. While reading, students were told to annotate for ideas that conveyed the speaker’s viewpoint about the topic. After reading this student’s annotations, you can see that this activity successfully helped form a baseline of knowledge about Steinem’s view on gender equality. For example, this student made note of “discrimination”, “myths” about women, and the “change” that was occurring at the time of Steinem’s speech.
After students read the speech, they read and analyzed a pro and con article. This student sample is representative of the text that students read who were reading and writing about immigration. During this activity, students looked at specific rhetorical devices that each author used in order to effectively communicate their viewpoint.
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Reading and analyzing these articles helped students see both sides of a controversial issue. It supported students' understanding about what types of details they may need to include or not include in order to effectively persuade the audience they were writing to.
Student Engagement and Collaboration During the Writing Process
During the writing process, students were able to collaborate with their peers to share ideas and perspectives about the topics they were writing about. Here is a picture of students collaborating during the pre-writing process. During this activity, students were brainstorming and narrowing down who they would be writing to and what specific issue they would discuss in their letter.
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During this time, I worked alongside my students by discussing an injustice I wanted to address. The poster, circled in black, demonstrates the pre-writing example I used while modeling for my students how I think through the different perspectives of a controversial issue. Modeling this activity served the purpose of helping my students develop the skill-set they need in order make informed opinions about what injustice they were addressing.
Once students discussed their knowledge and opinions about the issues, they completed this pre-writing activity. As you can see by looking at the final box, this student was successfully able to narrow down what they were going to advocate for.
Using their pre-writing and learned knowledge about the topic they were discussing, students drafted their letter to an authentic audience of their choice. This is a student sample of the drafting and revision process students went through.
After students drafted and revised their letter, they conducted a peer review. This gave students an additional opportunity to discuss their ideas and opinions with others as well as hear the ideas and opinions of their peers. For example, the ideas presented in this student’s letter were validated by the comment, “I like the way that you talk about economic, political, and social problems”.
Examples of Student Follow-Through and Leadership
The samples of letters below represent how students used their voices to advocate for themselves and other individuals in their community. Each letter is written to a person in power and contains their personal viewpoint supported by sound evidence about the topic they were addressing. In addition, students discussed their personal experiences with these injustices. Allowing students to share their personal experiences with an authentic audience demonstrated to them that the challenges they or members of their community face do not have to go unheard. There is value in what they are saying. In addition, speaking about these injustices, for example how immigrants are treated in the United States, helped students reflect on and increase pride in their cultural identity.
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Overall, students used an academic tone to convey to their audience the necessity of addressing and changing the injustices that exist in our society. After receiving teacher feedback on their persuasive letters, students typed their letter, and then they addressed and stamped an envelope for it to be delivered. In addition to the letters showcasing students engaging in an activity that pushed them to use their voice to create change, the pictures below represent that students followed-through with speaking out against real-world injustices. After addressing and stamping the envelopes, the letters were sent to the public officials students wrote to.
The student work sample to your left is an additional writing sample I want to highlight. Although this letter still focuses on the topic of women’s rights, this student conducted their own research that informed new knowledge about the injustice brought up in class. This student taking the lead to conduct independent research brought new perspectives and opinions to the conversation.
Student Reflections: Impact of Action-Related Advocacy
Throughout this assignment, I wanted students to understand the power and value of their ideas and the impact they could make if they used their voice to advocate for themselves and others. To the left are student written reflections that highlight the relevancy of giving them resources and guidance about how they can use their assets to invoke social change. By reading the reflections, it is clear that engaging in this project helped students understand the necessity to “take action” and “fight for something that is unfair”.
In this video, three students are speaking about what the letter project taught them, the importance of speaking out against injustices, and the impact advocacy can have on our society. This student testimonial demonstrates that my students engaged in and followed-through with an action-related advocacy project that I initiated.
Teacher Reflection
This assignment effectively provided students with the resources that they needed in order to form and express informed opinions about real-world injustices. By writing letters to an authentic audience about an issue they felt passionate about, students walked away with the idea that they can use their voices to speak up against problems they personally encounter. The activities and discussions that students engaged in gave them the space to discuss their ideas and see the value of their experiences. Throughout this assignment, I successfully worked alongside my students to empower them to share their existing understanding, learn new knowledge, and apply their content skills so they could engage in advocating for themselves and their community.
Socratic Seminar: Student-led Conversations
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In addition to students reading and writing about real-world issues, it is fundamental they have the opportunity to share their opinions and ideas with their peers in an academic setting. After developing informed opinions and ideas about injustices they or members of their community encounter, students engaged in a Socratic seminar that allowed them to be a part of a community of learners and critical thinkers. As a facilitator of a student-led conversation, I wanted to empower students with the ability to conduct an effective dialogue about real-world problems. Therefore, while preparing for the Socratic seminar, students completed preparation work that helped them synthesize all of the resources and information I provided to them while they developed knowledgeable about the injustices that exist in our society.
Because students got to select the overall topic and injustice they wanted to advocate for, there were a total of three Socratic seminars. The seminar students participated in either focused on immigration, gender inequality, or student rights.
Seminar Texts
While planning the Socratic seminar, I wanted to ensure that students were familiar with the texts and the ideas they discussed. Prior to the seminar, students participated in mini-lessons that focused on analyzing speeches and persuasive texts for rhetorical devices. In the mini-lessons, students developed an understanding of what the author of the piece was arguing and the pieces of evidence the author used to establish and support their viewpoint.
After receiving the mini-lesson, students applied their knowledge to the article that represented the injustice they were studying. To the left is a student sample that is completed about an article discussing student rights. This sample demonstrates this student’s ability to understand the author’s viewpoint, select details that support the viewpoint, and then analyze the rhetorical effectiveness of the writing.
In addition to analyzing how authors effectively conveyed their viewpoint, students analyzed the tone and how authors meet the needs of their audience. To the left is the speech and the completed handout that students used to support their understanding of tone and audience. You will find the annotated speech on page one through four and the completed handout on page five.
Preparation Work for the Socratic Seminar
During the seminar students were asked to discuss how people deal with issues of inequality in our society. In addition to talking about how people deal with inequalities, they were asked to discuss what the authors of the text used to effectively convey their viewpoint. The preparation work that students completed allowed them to plan their evidence and develop how they were going to articulate their own opinions and ask their peers questions about the topic of the seminar. Below are examples of the work completed by students prior to the seminar. Overall, the student work samples demonstrate students' ability to use information provided by me to develop a claim and provide textual evidence for and against their claim.
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Immigration Preparation Work
Student Rights Preparation Work
Gender Equality Preparation Work
Student Written Preparation Questions
Resources During the Socratic Seminar
In order to hold students accountable to respectfully listening to and responding to their peers, I provided clear expectations for their participation in the seminar. As the facilitator of a student-led conversation, my role was to ensure that students were upholding these expectations. In addition to providing clear expectations for student participation, I also wanted to provide sentence starters that would support academic discussion. The sentence starters that I provided also helped students articulate their ideas in a clear way.
Evidence of the Socratic Seminar
Students participating in a Socratic seminar
Students had texts, their preparation work, and questions to help support their participation in the seminar.
The audio of the Socratic seminar demonstrates student’s ability to thoughtfully explain their viewpoints, use text evidence to support their viewpoint, and respectfully listen to and add to their peer’s viewpoints. Below are some highlights from the seminar:
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At 00:06 a student clearly cites textual evidence from an article that discusses the discrepancies women face when it comes to opportunities within our society.
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The student question found at 00:46 illustrates that students were able to question the purpose of evidence found in the article and question the persuasive devices used to achieve that purpose.
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Students were thoughtfully able to articulate how people within our society deal with injustices. The response to a peer’s comment, found at 2:14, clearly demonstrates this idea.
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**When citing evidence, students in this video are using the Gloria Steinem speech about the Equal Rights Amendment.
Teacher Reflection
The above evidence thoroughly demonstrates student’s ability to speak about real-world problems while citing textual evidence from resources provided in class. Participating in a Socratic seminar with their peers gave students the opportunity to critically think about and discuss what they read. In addition, the seminar gave students the space to share their personal experiences and knowledge about the injustice they were talking about. Overall, I believe the seminars were successful because students used the resources they were provided to engage in academic discussions about real-world injustices.
Conclusion
Reading, writing, and discussing real-world injustices allowed my students to successfully identify and advocate for an issue they felt passionate about. The resources presented in class allowed students to build upon their experience and knowledge in order to skillfully communicate their viewpoints. Ultimately, students were able to use their individual assets to expressive the necessity of social change about persistent injustices in our society.
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The above evidence demonstrates how students were given the opportunity to participate in academic discussions about persistent injustices. The seminar provided a space for students to develop the speaking and listening skills that are needed to effectively communicate your viewpoints to others.
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Throughout this section, it is clear that my thoughtful planning of activities and utilization of meaningful resources helped students grow their knowledge and skill-sets that are needed for them to become informed and engaged citizens. I made it a priority to work alongside my students to validate their ideas, help them generate new ideas, and give them the confidence they need to speak out against the injustices that directly impact them.