Committed to infusing social justice into the everyday curriculum, Friends Select teachers are intentional about choosing topics that challenge the thinking and analyzing skills of lower schoolers.
Even in the younger grades, students identify issues that are important to them. Whether it is about protecting wildlife in the ocean or how to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, students are encouraged to be independent thinkers as they formulate their own ideas of what it means to live in a more socially just world.
Students and teachers participate in monthly assemblies that celebrate heritage months. This includes students sharing aspects of their identities with their classmates and welcoming speakers and performance groups throughout the school year. Teachers work together to create programming each year for Social Justice Day. Students spend the entire day participating in activities that center around specific topics, such as racial justice and collective action. The culmination of this day is a Meeting for Worship that allows students to reflect on all that they have learned throughout the day and how they plan to take action moving forward.
Teachers who participate in the lower school DEI committee work throughout the year to host Friends Select’s annual Lower School DEI Book Awards. They identify recently published books that focus on issues of race and ethnicity and other topics of identity. This becomes an all-school project in that students, teachers, parents, caregivers, school administrators, and board members volunteer to be readers of the books that are chosen in order to vote on winners that are announced at an end-of-year celebration. Categories include Best Biography, Best Books that explain a difficult topic, and a special award that highlights realistic fiction that centers on characters of color that celebrate their identities without focusing on historical struggles.
