Social Justice Committee Enters Fifth Year at UHS
Social justice has been a focus and goal throughout Urbana High School. Since 2007, when Principal Dr. Laura Taylor founded the Social Justice Committee, social justice at UHS has expanded to beyond a simple idea.
“[Social justice at UHS] just slowly built,” Taylor said.
In the coming year, the committee hopes to continue the annual exchanges, participate in “Friday Forum” (a series of speakers at the University of Illinois), and work with Students to Students. Wednesday, September 21st, Social Justice Committee had their first meeting of the year, the club meets the third Wednesday of every month from 3:30 to 4:30.
“They are different from us, they are far away, they live in a small town,” committee chair Ellen Dahlke said.
Although they are slightly different, people in far away places have many things in common with us. The annual exchange of students is an opportunity for selected students to attend a more rural school for a day to experience a different environment. Students from the more rural school attend UHS the same day. This program breaks down barriers between the school and creates a sense of extended community.
“Friday Forum” is a speaker series at the U of I. Each Friday a individual or group gives a presentation. The Social Justice Committee is giving a presentation on “How Local Schools are Advancing Social Justice”. Students on the committee are given an opportunity to speak during the presentation or help plan the presentation.
“We’re looking to use the committee as an avenue for leadership opportunities,” committee co-chair Moyer said.
The Social Justice Committee is teaming up with Students to Students (S2S) to run a project to help young people get an education, even if they can’t afford it. Lawrence High School is a new school, it’s freshman class will be of 100 students. S2S and the Social Justice Committee hopes sponsoring these students will become a community effort. The education the sponsored students can gain will change their lives.
Before the program, the students had not been exposed to enough different kinds of foods for each of them to name a unique food, Senior in the Students to Students program Kristen Slaughter said.
A class based around social justice will begin next semester and is being offered for the very first time at UHS. The semester long class takes a deep look into society and examines all kinds of discrimination and prejudice. Students in the Social Justice Class will explore ways to improve social justice, question the norm of our world, and determine if there is anything they cannot change.
Students in the Social Justice Class take part in challenging experiments and creative projects. Those who never imagined themselves having strong opinions in social justice, found themselves quickly discovering and strengthening their viewpoints.
In one experiment, students wore buttons for 24 hours that showed their support for a social justice issue they believed in, Taylor said.
As a final project, students do a service work or create an ongoing project. One final projects a group of students took on in the summer class was the murals painted outside the main office. Another was a disability awareness project where 10 UHS students had to use wheelchairs for an entire day, and teachers had to accommodate for their needs. Later, that evening, students participated in a wheelchair basketball game.
Social justice is about improving the climate, Taylor said.
The Social Justice Program’s goals are: to lead staff to improve their understanding of social justice and social justice topics, to act as a research group for social justice issues in education, to act as a resource for staff interesting in incorporating social justice into their classroom, to involve student perspective to social justice school improvements, to be actively involved in the community and groups that support social justice.
“We exist in order to come together as a community and order to improve through the lens of social justice,” Dahlke said.
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