Social Justice School

The SJS mission is to catalyze an integrated community of middle-school learners to be scholar-activists who are designers of a more just world. In order to design a more just world, students require an education that embraces and lives out a set of core beliefs about what it means to be human.

Get to Know this Liberatory School

Opening its doors in 2020, The Social Justice School's education model is rooted in rigorous academics, social justice, and liberatory design thinking.

Location: Washington, D.C.

Size: >300

Demographics: Unknown

Grade Band: In 2020, SJS opened its' doors to 5th & 6th graders, eventually serving grades 5 - 8.

Governance Structure: Public Charter

Website: https://www.thesocialjusticeschool.org/

Graduate Aims

Design Principles

Knowledge & Skills:

  • I can solve conceptual mathematical problems and I am fluent in procedures.

  • I can critically analyze all types of texts.

  • I can clearly express my ideas and arguments orally and in writing.

  • I can use the scientific method to investigate the world.

Habits of Mind:

  • I am FREE

    • I am fearless in the face of injustice

    • I am relentless in the pursuit of justice

    • I am empathetic to the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of others

    • I am engaged with heart and mind

  • I can use the Liberatory Design Thinking process to solve problems

  • I can use self-regulation skills and an awareness of my strengths and needs in order to achieve my goals

  • I can respond to failure with courage and a growth mindset

  • I can work ethically to solve real-world problems

Values:

  • I can understand and approach the needs of others with empathy and compassion.

  • I am an advocate of social justice and have the skills to interrupt systems of oppression.

  • I understand my intersectional identity and acknowledge the intersectionality of others

Experiences:

  • I have completed a service learning project that builds from my own skills, strengths and identities while designing for the needs of the community.

  • I have researched a social justice issue and develop an action plan that will tackle a real world problem in my community.

Students, staff, and families are F.R.E.E.:

At SJS, we believe that a more just world requires that well-informed, caring, and activated individuals are:

  • Fearless— in the face of injustice;

  • Relentless— in the pursuit of justice;

  • Empathetic— to the feelings, thoughts and experiences of others; and

  • Engaged— with heart and mind.

Inclusive learning environment:

SJS is an inclusive educational space where students build deep relationships across differences. The culture of the students, families, and teachers are reflected in the curriculum of our school—cultural differences are celebrated, and we are intentionally integrated. A key structure that we use to cultivate these community bonds is Crew, the advisory program at the core of the EL Education model. Crews are diverse teams of students and teachers who work together during daily sessions to build and sustain the relationships and habits that are the strong foundation of a social-emotional learning environment. Crew creates an intentional culture where every student is known, and where every member of the community is a vital part of the whole—EL Education describes this interconnected support by saying that “there are no passengers, only crew.”


Design-oriented and iterative:

SJS believes that students should engage in work that is meaningful, active, and rooted in problem-solving that contributes to a better world. Students engage with the world as active learners. They see the world as a process and not a product. As such, they feel more empowered to change their reality. To do this, the process through which students learn must be centered around problem-solving.

Featured Student Experiences

Liberation Design Lab

This course (Social Studies block) happens inside of SJS' maker space. Scholar-activists learn to tackle real-world problems using design thinking with 'an added dose of liberation.' The goals of the LDL are for teachers and scholar-activists to see themselves as equity-centered designers, to iterate on their projects until they are exemplary, and to build identities, beautiful objects, and relationships. Students will learn how to apply the Liberatory Design Thinking (or LDT) process, and students will tackle real world problems by using the process.

Learning Expeditions

As part of their Expeditionary Learning designation, Expeditions are 6-12 week in-depth investigations of a single topic or problem. These long-term, in-depth studies offer real-world connections that inspire students toward higher levels of academic achievement. Learning expeditions at SJS are largely centered around social justice issues students feel compelled to investigate and address. Rooting expeditions in Social Justice provides an organic frame to investigate and identify local and broader issues, leading to the learning, design, and application of ethical solutions. Learning expeditions involve students in original research, critical thinking, and problem solving, and they build character along with academic skills.

Crew

Teachers and leaders create intentionally integrated advisories, called Crews (from the EL model), which are diverse in terms of gender, race/ethnicity, students with disabilities, and languages spoken. Each Crew will stay together throughout their years at the school. The bedrock structure of Crew is daily meetings to support everyone’s learning and growth. During this time, students, in a small setting, build meaningful relationships with peers and their Crew leader while reflecting on and monitoring academic progress and focusing on character development. As SJS, Crews will meet once daily for 30 minutes each time.

Crew also helps to ensure that every student is known by an adult who they can trust, who guides them with academic, social, and emotional challenges. The Crew leader’s goals are to make connections with the student and the family, to monitor progress academically, emotionally, and behaviorally, and to be the primary point of contact for the school and the family.

The culture of Crew inspires, and teaches, all members of a school community to work together as a team to pitch in and help others. Even the name Crew is synonymous with a team working together to all achieve their collective goal of being prepared for college and citizenship. Many things in Crew happen collaboratively, which works well with a developmental design culture where students and teachers work together to democratically establish norms, structures, and more.

Other school structures help build Crew culture and ensure that every student is well known and supported by peers and adults. Crew is an engine for equity and inclusion, a place where all students feel they belong and can succeed; it is a place for teaching Social Justice strategies, where students will also participate in race and equity seminars. For example, we implement the lessons and strategies that are articulated in Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to teach Social Comprehension to help students understand and analyze social comprehension issues. Students explore diversity, bias and microaggressions. These lessons are aligned to the Social Justice Standards.

Key School-Wide Practices

Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment

The academic model at SJS is rooted in social justice and culturally responsive learning. As an Expeditionary Learning school, learning is active and often happens outside of school walls, through expeditions in the community. Academics are also rooted in liberatory design thinking, which empowers students to identify creative solutions to real-world problems. Curricular content pulls from various sources, such as EL, Teaching Tolerance, Amplify Science, Illustrative Math, and in-house designs. When struggling to master content objectives and standards, students are afforded opportunities to reassess their learning.

Community & Culture

The SJS community deliberately reflects the spirit and diversity of America, in that it's racially and socioeconomically diverse, integrated, democratic, and oriented towards problem-solving. SJS is an inclusive community (their website explicitly welcomes every student, saying, "We stand with you. You are safe here."), where students, educators, and families strive towards social justice in order to enact change in their school, community, and beyond.

SJS aspires to create a positive, supportive, emotionally and physically safe school culture infused with SJS school values, where students feel that they are supported, part of a community, and empowered to create positive change within that community. In addition to Crew, the main space for community- and culture-building, SJS has several structures that cut across all parts of the student experience to ensure this is true:

  • Habits of Character & Learning Targets: In addition to academic graduate aims, SJS students work to build Habits of Character as well. SJS supports students by explicitly teaching Habits of Work and Character and setting Habits goals, as well as facilitating community-building activities during Crew.

    • Compassion - Practice kindness & empathy

    • Perseverance - Be relentless in academic and social justice pursuits

    • Designers - Create your highest quality work

    • Responsibility - Own your role and be accountable

    • Think Critically - Ask questions, explore, and design solutions

  • Focus on Positive Behavior: Part of learning Habits of Character is understanding how to make choices that lead to positive outcomes. SJS uses a Positive Behavior Intervention Systems (PBIS) to encourage positive behavior. This is a research-based program, shown to work with similar populations that includes incentives for positive behavior, and consistent behavioral expectations across the school. The PBIS system ensures that ALL students can participate in incentives and not just the same group of students.

In addition to a PBIS, SJS has school-wide supports for recognition of positive behavior and exemplars of the Habits of Work and Character such as awards and recognition at Morning Meetings. There is an earned incentive twice a month, such as a roller-skating party, and there are quarterly incentives that all students will be able to participate in as members of the community. “Habits Bucks” are an example of an incentive and a reward, which students may use at the school store. Students can purchase snacks and other SJS swag at the school store. Teachers use Class Dojo in order to track student behavior.

  • Classroom Management Through Developmental Design: Developmental Design is an approach to creating a school culture where students are invested. In this model, teachers teach students to be self-aware and to manage their behavior. To do this, students and teachers work together and democratically establish three to five consistent schoolwide positively stated agreements. These agreements are taught and practiced during Crew.

    • Goal Setting: In Crew, students and Crew Leaders work together to establish short term and long term academic and social goals.

    • Modeling/Practicing: Staff, students and families model the school-wide expectations and students practice the schoolwide expectations in class and during Crew. Teachers model the Habits of Character and students practice them in class and during Crew.

  • Social Contract: As alluded to above, students and teachers work together to create a Social Contract. The Social Contract outlines between three and five schoolwide agreements that will govern the school. The three to five consistent school-wide positively stated agreements will be based on the themes of Safety, Belonging, Mutual Respect, and Engagement. Teachers and students also work together to democratically establish three to five schoolwide pathways (redirections) towards self-control.

  • Pathways of Self Control: The pathways of self-control are strategies that students use to get back on track when a disciplinary issue has occurred. It’s important to note that Developmental Design stands in contrast with rigid one-size-fits-all classroom management frameworks. There are prescribed consequences for specific actions in rigid classroom management frameworks. For example, if a student does X then they automatically receive consequence Y. Developmental Designs is built on the idea that teachers have a menu of pathways (consequences) to use in order to get students back on task. The teacher assigns the pathway that works for that student based on their relationship and knowledge of that student’s need.

Those pathways could include:

    • Take a Break in the classroom: Student is assigned or chooses to go to the designated “take a break” space with their work and rejoins the class when they are focused.

    • Take a Break outside of the classroom: Student is assigned to or chooses a space in a different teacher’s classroom to go to and take a break space with their work, and rejoins the class when they are focused and check-in with the teacher

    • Loss of Privilege: Student might not be able to attend recess or choose their seat during lunch

    • Short Problem-Solving Conference: Student and teacher meet to identify a written agreement that both the teacher and student agree to in order to resolve the problem

    • Long-Term-Problem Solving Conference: Student, teacher, Principal and family meet to identify a written agreement that both the teacher and student agree to in order to resolve the problem that the student is facing

    • After School Reset: If referred to detention, the student will attend detention from 4:00 PM - 4:30 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. After School Reset is a space for students to reflect on their behavior, understand its impact on themselves and others, and to develop a plan to repair the harm done or to make the situation better.

  • Student Behavior Responses: When harm occurs, restorative practices are used for those involved “to understand what happened, it's impacts, and how to repair the harm." When disciplinary action is warranted, it is individualized, fair, equitable, developmentally appropriate, proportional to the severity of the student’s offense. SJS uses a response matrix in these cases. It is important to note that teachers may use a variety of different redirections to ensure that students get back on track. This policy applies to behavior on school grounds, during any school-activity, and off campus behavior, even if not during a school-activity, if the behavior has an impact on another SJS student, the school community or disrupts the school environment. Read their full behavioral approach here!

Schedule & Use
of Time

For all SJS’s scholar-activists, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday school begins at 8:30 AM and ends at 4:15 PM. Noteworthy scheduled student experiences include Crew, learning blocks for coaching and office hours, differentiated blocks for content instruction, work time, and POWER (core academic blocks). On Wednesdays, school begins at 8:30 AM and ends at 1: 00 PM and has special programming. After students dismiss, staff use the time for professional development and collaborative planning.

Adult Roles & Learning

SJS recruits a diverse team that is willing to co-create an engaging learning experience for students that is rooted in social justice. The majority of staff at SJS are people of color, allowing students to see themselves reflected in all parts of school.

Family & Community Partnerships

SJS develops deep, loving, and trusting relationships with families in order to develop a two-way partnership that supports the success of every student as we prepare them to become scholar-activists. They host a number of family events, encourage classroom volunteerships, visits, etc. SJS also maintains several aligned community partnerships, with organizations like EL, Citybridge, and Education Forward, to name a few.

Space &
Facilities

Learning is dynamic and community-centered, meaning it occurs both within and beyond traditional classrooms walls.

Budget & Operations

SJS admits students through the MyDC common lottery.

Communications

Families and staff are regularly in touch, and more so when needed. Additionally, SJS puts out weekly robocalls and emails from the Principal, a weekly Social Justice School Times specific to each grade level, through student-led conferences, and their active social media presence. SJS is also very open to visitors who want to get a taste of the magic themselves.

See It. Hear It. Feel It.

About Social Justice School

Liberatory Design at SJS