Social Justice Poetry

ABOUT OUR CLASS (AS TOLD BY A STUDENT)

We are a group of students in Texas who have been assigned a poetry blog assignment. Proud of our races, beliefs and self being, we took these social justice poems to heart, and with stout minds tried our best on these poems. We are on the average of 13 to 14 years of age, and aware of the issues our world is facing.

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ABOUT OUR PROJECT (A TEACHER'S NOTE)

Throughout our recent study on poetry, students learned that poetry can be a vehicle for social change. Poems are charged with emotion and often inspire people to action. So, we studied the techniques poets use to create powerful, moving messages with the hopes of applying those principles to our own compositions. Our students have studied Catholic Social Teaching throughout their three years in our middle school. Grounded in this philosophy, students were asked a simple question: "Where in my society are people being treated poorly? How can I speak out against this injustice?" 

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Before writing, we educated ourselves on local and national issues and examined examples of social justice poetry. Students read articles from newsela.com, and each chose a topic he or she felt especially passionate about. Then, we analyzed @ the Crossroads—A Sudden American Poem by current poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera. Armed with this knowledge, students set about becoming social justice poets themselves, or rebels with a cause. 

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All the work you will see here expresses the thoughts and feelings of my eighth grade students. I can claim no credit for their brilliance. As their "Author's Explanations" will evince, they made sophisticated and intentional choices about the way they used  words to share a story and evoke emotion.

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I hope that, like me, you will find their poems fantastically powerful. I hope you will see in their words what I hear in their voices every day: smart, capable young people who can see our world very clearly as it is, and yet imagine so vividly and beautifully all it could be.