Chapter 24: A Window Into Social Justice in the Primary Classroom

What is social justice to first graders? That question can be answered by listening carefully to their powerful voices—Who are they? Who do they love? How do they envision their future? Students in a first grade Spanish Dual Language program learn about cognates and metalinguistic connections with the classroom understanding that “what we know in one language we know in all languages,” but why is this important? Students are eager to learn about the world around them and ready to use language as a tool for positive social change, even at a young age. In these endeavors, reading provides a way for students to access not only words, but also perspectives— those with which they can identify and those that are new. Books in this sense become mirrors that reflect experiences, windows to the possibility of dreams, and sliding glass doors leading to new worlds (Sims Bishop, 1990). These mirrors and windows provide students with the opportunity to explore varying points of view and recognize themselves as agents of change, even as they learn to read and write in two languages.