Supporting Question 1: Defining Educational Justice

About This Lesson

Students will consider the meaning of educational justice by reviewing documents and accounts of African American, Latinx, and Chinese American Bostonians’ experiences in Boston schools in the 1960s. Students will then complete a Frayer model graphic organizer and write their own definitions of educational justice.

Supporting Question

How did African American, Latinx, and Chinese American Bostonians envision educational justice for their children in the 1960s and 1970s?

Formative Task

Students will write a working definition of educational justice, list its characteristics, and name examples and non-examples.

Lesson Plan

Activity 1: Read Documents in Expert Groups

Give each student one of the sources for this activity:

• Reading: Vision for a New Quincy School in Chinatown
• Reading: A Latina Mother Responds to Conditions at School
• Reading: African American Parents Decry School Conditions
• Reading: Student Protests at English High School 

Explain to students that these sources provide evidence about how African American, Latinx, and Chinese American parents and students in Boston in the 1960s and early 1970s defined a just, fair, and equal education.

Ask students to read and annotate the source they have been given. As they read, they should highlight words and phrases as follows:

• Highlight (or circle) words or phrases that describe education that is just, fair, and equal for all students—examples of educational justice.
• Highlight in a different color (or underline) words or phrases that describe education that is NOT just, fair, and equal for all students—non-examples of educational justice. (If necessary, explain to students that a non-example is something that shows a lack of educational justice.)

Note that students will likely end up with a disproportionate number of examples or non-examples, depending on the source each student is working with. This is due to the nature and purpose of the documents themselves.

Give students a few minutes to share their annotations with a partner who has read and annotated the same source.

Activity 2: Use Evidence from Sources to Name Characteristics and Examples of Educational Justice

The class will now use a Frayer model graphic organizer to determine the meaning of educational justice and (for the formative task) create a definition for it.  

But first, because students worked with different sources in the previous activity, begin by briefly summarizing each source. Ask for volunteers who worked with each of the sources to answer the following questions:

• What kind of source is it?
• Whose perspective does it represent?
• What does it say?

Then put students in groups so that each group includes at least one person who annotated each source in the previous activity. Pass out the Defining Educational Justice handout. In their groups, students will use details from the sources they analyzed to fill in the Characteristics, Examples, and Non-examples sections of the graphic organizer. For now, students should leave the Definition section blank. Remind students that even though they have their own copy of the handout, their graphic organizer should reflect input from all of their group members and the sources they analyzed.

Time permitting, you might wrap up the activity with a whole-group debrief in which volunteers share some of the characteristics, examples, and non-examples their groups discussed.

Formative Task

Define Educational Justice

Students will write their own definition of educational justice and add it to the Definition section of their Defining Educational Justice handout. They should base their definition on the characteristics, examples, and non-examples they already listed on the handout during Activity 2.