Diving into Social Justice

MTS 5th graders have spent the beginning of the school year diving into social justice in Talia Rhodes' class. Below is a brief overview of some of the work they've started with outlined by Talia. 

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IDENTITY

We started by exploring our own identities, exploring the question, “What makes us who we are?” Inspired by poet George Ella Lyon, students each wrote their own “Where I’m From” poem.

Students incorporated different literary devices like personificationsimiles, and imagery. In the coming days, students will work on a tech integration project in which they use the Apple application Clips to create a video of their poem.

RACE AND RACISM

We then explored race, eventually realizing that race is a social construct

New Learnings about Race

With this in mind, we learned about the different levels of racism (internalized, interpersonal, institutional, structural) and how they interact with one another. Students read about news events and discussed the levels of racism. Students each created a concept map to show how the levels of racism interact.

About racism graphic slide

HEROES AND ACTION

With the 2020-2021 MTS theme of Action! in mind, students next explored how people take action to make a difference. Students read about different modern-day heroes and chose a change agent in their own lives to write about and present on through either a Google Slides presentation or news article (check out Oriana's article here). 

A 5th grader presenting in Humanities class
Qualities of a Hero brainstorm on poster in class

We then decided to be change agents ourselves as leaders in the Lower School. Students have been working in small groups to write picture books for K-2 students on taking action. The goal of these books is to empower younger students to take action in their everyday lives. 

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