Students Engaging Their Own Desires for Social Justice in the Classroom

• In Event: Trans, Queer, and Nonbinary Students' Experiences With Schooling

Abstract

In this paper, I draw on data from a yearlong ethnography in an urban high school in Western Canada to explore the role of Social Justice (SJ) 12, an elective course unique to British Columbia. I focus on observations and interactions within the course to extend scholarship on Canadian homonationalism into the realm of schooling. I argue that the students interjected their own knowledge and curiosities into lessons that were not expansive or radical enough to capture their engagement. Together these students worked to seek out the learning they desired, despite the limitations they hit within the classroom. Attending to the teaching and learning in SJ12 provokes an interrogation of what it means to teach social justice within a school.

Author

• LJ Slovin, The University of British Columbia