Advocacy

Students have knowledge of injustice in the world, have informed opinions about it, and know that their voice and actions have value. They can advocate for themselves and others.

Introduction

Developing student advocates for me means that I am familiarizing students with the terms and actions that are associated with advocacy for themselves and throughout their community. By learning these skills they become aware of the injustices that many people are facing throughout the world, they are developing informed opinions around acting, and understanding the power of their voices in advocacy. Advocacy is a critical component of bringing change into the lives of my students personally as well as supporting them through addressing local, national, and global issues of inequity. In both of the advocacy activities students are challenged to genuinely interact with the principles of advocacy to assist in their own self advocacy moving forward and to view advocacy through the lens of someone else with an environmental impact. In order to ensure a meaningful experience I made sure that they were initially familiar with advocacy and what it means to advocate for a cause. It was important that they were walked through each step of the process and provided with relevant examples to base their actions around and given in a choice in how they advocated for their causes to make this activity more inclusive.

Click below to experience how I am bringing awareness to advocacy in my classroom through personal and community connections.

Conclusion

Working to build an inclusive classroom means supporting my students in their journey of self advocacy and broadening their understanding of what it means to be a local and global advocate for causes that are faced around the world. My students are regularly subjected to the injustices of being in a Title I school that is in a neighborhood that is often overlooked by policymakers, which is why these activities were designed to increase their overall awareness of how they can impact change. After completing these assignments my students were now able to be better advocates for themselves, their community, and other communities that face injustice. They are now aware that advocacy comes in many forms to include letter writing, protesting, informing underrepresented groups about their rights, and supporting policy changes that promote equity. The tasks allowed students to be their own self advocated in situations they may face in school during the personal advocacy lesson, and take the role of someone else to help advocate for their own environmental/individual rights in the Town X activity. Moving forward I am confident that my students now have a better understanding of what it means to be an advocate and the importance their voices have in making changes in the world around them.