Teaching our Students to be Active Members in Society

 We need to teach our students to "intervene in their realities" and become "active subjects in their own lives" through teaching them critical literacy strategies. We need to teach them to constantly question what they are seeing around them and what they are reading. We need to make sure they understand when certain stereotypes are being expressed in texts they read, as well as any biases. It is important to incorporate questioning techniques into any classroom. I am constantly researching ways to incorporate these social justice topics into my mathematics classroom, and it is actually much easier than it sounds. In math, we can incorporate these topics into multi-part word problems that involve mathematics and then talk about the social inequalities represented in the question and discover the multiple viewpoints of the students in the classroom. We need to teach our students to notice injustices and to go out and support their peers and promote whatever areas in social justice that they are passionate about outside of the classroom. As a teacher, however, we must also live the lifestyle that we are preaching. I will make sure that I am just as active in my community and in my school as I would love for my students to be. Teachers are role models and need to act upon what they expect from their students. (AM)