Social Justice & Equity



Credit: CSU Fullerton Social Justice Summit Site

Our ITU has a strong focus on social justice and equity. Students will learn about the responsibility that being a “green citizen” entails. Responsibility requires that students gain knowledge, awareness, and become active citizens in their community. Students will learn about the reality behind issues that affect staple landmarks of their community, like the beach and the Carlsbad lagoons. Students will participate in service learning by assisting environmental clean up activities at one of the Carlsbad lagoons, the Carlsbad beaches, or Carlsbad parks. We want students to question, reflect, act and then spread their knowledge to others who may not have access to the same resources as our students do. That is why we are emphasizing the reflective portion of the service learning.

Communication of Expectations:
Social justice and equity will first be addressed through each of the four content areas our teachers represent. In Week 1 of our 6 week unit, each individual teacher will introduce the purpose of the Integrated Thematic Unit. We will emphasize that the service learning portion of our ITU is essential for truly achieving our learning objectives. We will emphasize reflection on social justice and equity through the application of our different disciplines and the questions, "What does it mean to be a green citizen?" and "How does my work impact the community?". These questions, which our service learning and Digital Portfolio (ITU's summative assessment) ask students to consider, will be at the forefront of our instruction and will represent the overarching themes we want students to focus on. These questions also transform our ITU into an interdiscplinary project in which students will be able to draw from different content areas to answer. Our rubric for the final Digital Portfolio provides clear expectations for the students and supports our instruction from the previous weeks. Students will receive the rubric before they begin to work on their projects.

Please refer to the Calendar page for a more detailed breakdown of lessons and the procedure of the project.

Please refer to the Objectives, Standards and Assessments page for more information on the rubric and Digital Learning Portfolio.