Educating for Justice: Schoolwide Strategies to Prepare Students to Recognize, Analyze, and Challenge Inequity

In a world marked by deep-seated injustices based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and other identity markers, schools can be powerful places for students to learn to recognize, analyze, and challenge these inequities.

Educating for Justice teams award-winning principal Julia Bott with scholars Scott Seider and Aaliyah El-Amin to describe schoolwide structures and practices that prepare students at every grade level to challenge injustice and build a better world. Sharing research-backed strategies, concrete tools, and examples drawn from real schools and classrooms, they offer guidance on

- Centering justice in curriculum and pedagogy.
- Fostering powerful partnerships with families and community partners.
- Engaging students in social action.
- Building adult capacity.

Learn how fitting these principles together can prepare your school to develop or adapt curriculum that nurtures students' critical consciousness; collaborate with families and community partners to strengthen justice-based school practices; establish opportunities for students to participate in social action challenging injustice; and build adult-learning structures that cultivate educators' social justice knowledge and empower families to be partners in this work.

Schools have a vital role to play in readying the next generation to challenge injustice and transform society--and this book is an indispensable tool to empower you and your students to lead that transformation.

Scott Seider is a professor of applied developmental and educational psychology at Boston College. His research focuses on the role that educators can play in fostering young people's civic development and critical consciousness. A former secondary teacher, Scott is the author of more than 75 academic publications, including Schooling for Critical Consciousness: Engaging Black and Latinx Youth in Analyzing, Navigating, and Challenging Racial Injustice (co-authored with Daren Graves). Scott also currently serves on advisory boards for a number of youth-serving organizations, including EL Education, the Journal of Adolescent Research, and the Center for Parent and Teen Communication.

Aaliyah El-Amin is a faculty member at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where her research and teaching focus on ensuring that educators have the knowledge and tools they need to disrupt systems of oppression. Her specific interest areas include liberatory education models, social justice schooling, critical pedagogy, and youth participatory action research. Aaliyah has also worked as an elementary classroom teacher and a school instructional facilitator in Atlanta, GA; executive director of Teach for America in Charlotte, NC; and interim vice president of program and innovation for the Black Teacher Collaborative.

Julia Bott is the executive director of inclusive education for Boston Public Schools, where she supports leaders and educators to cultivate more equitable and inclusive learning opportunities for all students. Julia has also worked as an early childhood teacher, assistant principal, and principal, and she was named a 2021 National School Principal of the Year for her exemplary leadership and service. Additionally, she has planned and led professional development courses for school leaders and teacher leaders focused on instructional leadership for equity. Julia earned her doctorate in educational leadership at Boston College, where her research focused on how leaders leverage instructional leadership to build the pedagogical knowledge and skill of educators for social justice.