Where Is the Justice? Engaged Pedagogies in Schools and Communities

This inspirational book is about engaged pedagogies, an approach to teaching and learning that centers dialogue, listening, equity, and connection among stakeholders who understand the human and ecological cost of inequality. The authors share their story of working with students, teachers, teacher educators, families, community members, and union leaders to create transformative practices within and beyond public school classrooms. This collaborative work occurred within various spaces—including inside school buildings, libraries, churches, community gardens, and nonprofit organizations—and afforded opportunities to grapple with engaged pedagogies in times of political crisis. Featuring descriptions from a district-wide initiative, this book offers practical and theoretical resources for educators wanting to center justice in their work with students. Through question-posing, color images, empirical observations, and use of scholarly and practitioner-driven literature, readers will learn how to use these resources to reconfigure schools and classrooms as sites of engagement for equity, justice, and love.

Book Features:

• Provides a sound approach to deeply taking up the work of justice and engaged pedagogies.
• Presents linguistic, cultural, theoretical, and practical ideas that can be used and implemented immediately.
• Includes reflective questions, found poetry, lesson ideas, storytelling as narrative, and examples of engaged pedagogies.
• Shares stories from a district-wide initiative that embedded engaged pedagogies within classrooms, counseling offices, and libraries.
• Showcases original artwork and images in full color by Grace D. Player, one of the coauthors.

Valerie Kinloch is the Renée and Richard Goldman Dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Education and president of the National Council of Teachers of English (2021–2022). Her books include Race, Justice, and Activism in Literacy Instruction. She received the 2025 AERA Scholars of Color Distinguished Career Contribution Award. Emily A. Nemeth is an associate professor in the Department of Education at Denison University. Tamara T. Butler is executive director of Avery Research Center, College of Charleston. Grace D. Player is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Connecticut.

“Where Is the Justice? Engaged Pedagogies in Schools and Communities is a profound work of emancipatory pedagogy that brings together theory, classroom practice, artwork, poetry, and the beautiful stories of a multiracial community coming together. The authors provide lyrical snapshots of teachers and activists who reject the idea that some kids can’t learn, who resist an education that suffocates the brilliance of students, and who engage in solidarity to bring learning to life. Whether you are a preacher, teacher, community activist, or professor of education, this book will educate, inspire, and rally you in the much-needed struggle for education justice.”
—Linda Christensen, director, Oregon Writing Project, Lewis & Clark College

“This compelling book takes a fresh, multilayered approach in engaging the question of what justice is and how it may be achieved. Kinloch and her coauthors present a truly engaged pedagogy that takes account of people in the wholeness of their humanity and agency to advance racial justice and educational equity. This book provides a model of how scholars, youth, communities and teachers can work together in and across myriad contexts toward justice. Where Is the Justice? also serves as an outstanding work that challenges conventional understandings of scholarship by privileging art and poetry to convey its powerful messages. The book moves readers to identify and actualize their place and work in the cause of racial and educational justice.”
— Allison Skerrett, director of teacher education, The University of Texas at Austin

“By posing the pressing question in the title Where Is the Justice?, this provocative book engages readers from beginning to end. With the engaged literacy pedagogies for youth showcased here, readers are implored to engage in revolutionary and liberatory love via advocacy, agitation, and activation.”
—Gloria Swindler Boutte, Carolina Distinguished Professor, University of South Carolina

Contents

Series Foreword xi
Acknowledgments xv

“For Justice”: Our Found Poem #1

1. Schools for What and for Whom? A Focus on Engaged Pedagogies 1
Engaged Pedagogy, Resistance, and Not Reform 3
Trouble Behind and Ahead . . . Reform 8
Pursuing Transformations 10
Learning and Change 15
Where Is the Justice? Overview 15
Consider the Following 19

“On Not Waiting”: Our Found Poem #2

2. Bringing Learning to Life! Engaged Pedagogies in Practice 23
Coming Together: A BLTL Session at Connected 25
Bringing Learning to . . . What? A Brief Overview 28
Situating the Course in a Larger Context 32
You Did What? An Overview of BLTL Projects 35
BLTL Educator Pam Reed and a Focus on Positionality 37
Engaged Pedagogies in Practice 39
What If? 40
Appendix 2.A: Examples of Other Course Texts and Readings 41
Appendix 2.B: Examples of BLTL Critical Service-Learning and
Engagement Projects 42

“Waiting for . . .?”: Our Found Poem #3

3. With a Revolutionary Mind: Literacies, Communities, and Engaged Pedagogies 49
A Brief Vignette 51
Hyphenating Literacies 53
Empathetic Leadership 60
Consider These: Reflective Prompts 65
Restoration 70

“Change, Changes, Changing”: Our Found Poem #4

4. “Because I Am You”: Engaged Pedagogies and Critical Youth Organizing Literacies 75
Time Travel 79
Imagination and the Impossible: Youth Futures 80
Establishing Context: Justice High School and BLTL 83
Reflections From the Wake: BLTL and the World
Humanities Class 84
Engaging Activist Rhetorics: Cyberbullying and
Neighborhood Pride 88
Ruptured Landscapes, Engaged Learning 91

“Being Radical”: Our Found Poem #5

5. Where Is the Justice? Reconfiguring Time and Space for Engaged Pedagogies 95
Upheaval and Moments of Clarity 96
How Might These Things Look? 100
Civil Rights’ Educators 100
Learningscapes: Setting the Stage 102
What About Time? 104
Reconfiguring Space as Place-Making 111
Expanded Learningscapes 115
The Paradoxes of Engaged Pedagogies 117
Improvisation Artists, Masterful Weavers 120

“Really Not Waiting”: Our Found Poem #6

6. Irradicable Impacts: Engaged Pedagogies as Invitations to Equitable Learningscapes 123
Répondez S’il Vous Plaît: An Invitation 124
Scene I: Sisters’ Organic Learningscapes 126
Scene II: Engaging Fraternal Proximities 128
Scene III: Engagement as Retention 131
Scene IV: Really . . . A Power Drill? 133
Scene V: An Invitation to Reclaim Our Futures 136

“Moving, Even in Stillness”: Our Found Poem #7

7. Waiting for What? 141
This Is Not an Ending 144

“Waiting for What?” An Offering Found in Poetry (#8)

Notes 153
References 157
Index 167
About the Authors 173