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A gavel on an abstract background with the overlayed text "Teaching Social Justice With Short Stories"

Teaching Social Justice with Short Stories in Middle School

Short stories are great ways to tackle big issues in easy-to-digest lessons! Here are my tips for teaching social justice with short stories. Short stories can be great foundational texts for conversations about social justice and current events. (More about incorporating current events in the classroom here.) Because they’re short, they can act as common reading before students work on discussion and research. Also, teaching social justice with short stories can help students connect those stories to nonfiction texts like essays and news articles. They can hone in on the relationship between literature, politics, and “the real world.” This makes literature more relevant. And it’s always easier to talk about big issues through the lens of fictional characters. Besides suggestions for contemporary short stories, I’ve added other texts that fit this bill. Giving students a

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Danielle Hall May 4, 2021

5 Powerful Tips for Teaching Social Justice in ELA

Do you want to be teaching social justice in ELA but you don’t know where to start? Check out these tips, resources, and low-prep projects. The title of this post is a bit misleading. Social Justice is part of teaching about our society and culture, and that is our principal work as ELA teachers. Our tools of choice are stories and communication, and we can interweave those in the goals of social justice. What is Social Justice? Social Justice is the acknowledgement of disparities in wealth and opportunities in our society based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability and an engagement in the effort to decrease those disparities. Therefore, developing an ad campaign to raise awareness about childhood poverty? Social justice. Writing an argumentative essay about why the town library should be wheelchair accessible?

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Danielle Hall February 23, 2021

Teaching Social Justice with Literature Circles

We read a lot of books with social issues for the YA Cafe Podcast, and I feature a lot of these books on my own Instagram. Because of this, teachers often ask me for resources for teaching social justice books. Today, I want to share some specific resources for teaching social justice literature circles.     Literature circles are classroom book clubs that give students a chance to read a selected novel with a small group of their peers. You can set this up several ways, but I typically choose enough books so that there are 4-5 readers per group. I have students meet twice per week over four weeks. Students make a reading schedule during their first group meeting and they generate focus questions for their reading. I like to have group presentations at the

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Danielle Hall May 21, 2019
11 If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say Leila Sales cover

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say by Leila Sales

  We take a look at online shaming and Leila Sales’ new novel, If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say. Join us this week on the YA Cafe. (transcript)   In today’s episode…   In Leila Sales’ newest novel, If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, Winter Halperin gets caught up in a storm of online shaming after she posts a racist comment about the winner of the National Spelling Bee. She tries to defend herself, tries to apologize, claims she can’t be racist because she “has black friends”… it’s a whole thing. But when her college acceptance is rescinded and her future put on hold, she is forced to reckon with her actions. These Show Notes use Amazon Affiliate Links for your convenience. If you decide to purchase this book, please consider

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Danielle Hall May 3, 2018