Social Justice in the Classroom

The picture above was used as an advertisement by End It Movement, a coalition of anti-human trafficking organizations that seeks to bring awareness to this ever-present problem in our society and across the world. Every year since 2013, End It Movement has picked a day in February for all those aware of the problem of human trafficking to raise awareness of the issue together by drawing a red "X" on their hands and being a voice in their community. 

The reason I love this picture, though, is because it displays that red "X" to bring awareness to this social justice issue, but it also depicts a somewhat reserved, possibly helpless person doing so.

I know that, when I was in high school, I would hear about these social justice issues, such as human trafficking or extreme poverty or hunger, and I would want to drop out of school and travel the world and fix as many of the problems as I could. In reality, what could I do as a 15 year old that would drastically change these issues? Nothing really, except raise the voice that I did have to those people in power. 

But if I'm going to raise my voice in awareness of social injustice, I better also be living justly where I am. So I began to open my eyes to the people needing a friend or a voice all around me. I saw the kid getting bullied while waiting for his mom to come pick him up, I saw the girl who always sat alone in the lunch room, and I saw the freshman who was struggling to pick up all the books she dropped in the stairwell during class change. I opened my eyes to mini injustices happening all around me, and that is what has prepared me best to fight the big ones I see now to the best of my ability.

I think the biggest thing we need to teach the kids in our classrooms is that our fight against social injustice does not start when we grow up and have enough money or enough power to make this huge change. Our fight against social justice begins right there in the classroom, looking out for the lost and lonely peers sitting all around us. If we are not going to take care of the neighbor right next to us, how can we expect to change the world?