About

As a school for social justice serving predominantly working class communities of color, the mission of JJSE is not just to prepare students for college but also to prepare our graduates to be agents of positive change in the world. Our mission and vision is to prepare young people in three key areas:

Community

We live in respect, integrity, courage, and humility.

Social Justice

We stand against oppression, both internal and external, and see ourselves as part of the past, present, and future movements for justice in our communities and in our world.

Independent Thinkers

We develop ourselves as intellectuals with the skills we need to succeed.

JJSE has four values which form the foundation of our work as a school. We believe these ethical principles are more important than academics, and that our graduation and college access rates mean nothing if our graduates do not live by these basic human values. At June Jordan we say, “Get RICH!"

RESPECT

• Always give respect FIRST!

• It must be in both how you speak and how you move, sit, or stand.

• Listen, listen, and listen before speaking.

• Think of how you would want to be treated.

• Your respect for others is a reflection of your strength.

INTEGRITY

• Do what you say and say  what you do.

• Accept responsibility for your success and mistakes.

• Your work or no work.

• No need to lie.

• Have standards in your life.

• Respect deadlines.

COURAGE

• Face your fears.

• Face your peers.

• Take emotional risks in order to relate to others and change.

• Be vulnerable.

• Be prepared to stand alone.

• Accept the love and consequences that come with doing the right thing.

HUMILITY

• A necessary characteristic.

• No one knows everything.

• Indicates wisdom and confidence.

• One cannot learn without loss or failure.

• More concerned with resolution than victory.

“No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates….The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption.” -Paulo Freire

As a school for social justice serving a largely working-class, Latino and African-American student population, the mission of June Jordan School for Equity is not just to prepare students for college, but also to prepare our graduates to be agents of positive change in the world.

Consequently, our pedagogy is expressly designed to help our students understand the forces of marginalization they have experienced growing up, and thus to begin the process of freeing themselves from oppression, including especially the internalized oppression (or self-imposed limits) which we see preventing so many students from meeting their potential.

We are in the process of clearly defining the JJSE pedagogy, in order to support JJSE teachers on their path to becoming masters at the art of teaching for social justice, which in turn will provide all JJSE students the opportunity to develop the self-confidence and self-discipline they need to become not just authentic intellectuals, but also leaders who will work on behalf of their communities and create a more just and humane world.

We believe that this represents real accountability, in contrast to the test-based accountability that is so popular in education today:

1) Warm Demander: Develop your students as human beings first.

• Family & Culture: understand & honor the strengths of the community

• Authenticity: model vulnerability and humility, be an ally, respect your students

• Clear Boundaries: show strength, listen & affirm, challenge & offer a choice

• Growth Mindset: believe in the “impossible,” embrace failure

2) Safe Classroom Community: Protect your students in a potentially dangerous world.

• Prevention: clear expectations, talk about values, teacher voice, one mic

• Rituals: Mindfulness, talking circle, strong start, strong finish

• Jedi Awareness & control the mood

• Intervention: assume positive intent, keep it in perspective, deliberate escalation, when to stop the curriculum and when/how to remove students

3) Knowledge of Students: Start where your students are, not where you want/imagine them to be.

• Prior Knowledge: What do students know? What are their experiences? (Misconceptions?)

• Student Voice: What do students care about? What do they think? (examples of activities like sort, chalk talk, dot voting, etc.)

• Individual Needs: differentiation without tracking, adjusting instruction based on formative assessment

• Choice: students should have real choices about how and what they learn (this does not mean we let students study whatever they want, but rather that students should be active in driving their own learning)

4) Students as Intellectuals: Develop your students as a community of warrior-scholars.

• Inquiry: there is no “right answer,” questioning, evidence, students as sources of knowledge

• Collective Accountability: classroom as intellectual community

• Code Switching: academic language & discussion formats

• Intellectual Challenge: high-level multicultural texts, complex problems, big ideas, less is more

5) Teacher as Coach: Let your students do the work.

• Metacognition: students should know how they learn & how to self-assess

• Academic Skills: binders, annotations, note-taking skills, etc.

• Culture of Revision & Practice: models of excellent work, multiple revisions, guided practice

• Team Work: heterogeneous groups, clear roles, focus on the process, address status

6) Social Justice Curriculum: Teach a curriculum that helps students understand the real world.

• Clear Purpose: students know what they are doing and why it matters

• Relevance: the curriculum helps explain the real world & oppression (social justice curriculum in math, science, humanities, arts, language, special education/life skills, multicultural curriculum, community connections, & cross-curricular connections)

• Encourage Dissenting Opinions: critical thinking is the goal

• Human Values: the curriculum is grounded in justice, fairness, dignity, & cultural strengths