Inspiring Social Justice Activism in Middle School
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.
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
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