By Stephanie Walters

It is story time and my first-graders and I are reading the book Virgie Goes to School With Us Boys, about a young girl in the South shortly after the Civil War, whose parents do not want to send her to school. One of my students raises her hand and asks, “Ms. Walters, how can they do that? We know that isn’t fair.”

I explained that Virgie’s parents did not think she was ready to make the long trek to school and that a century ago, many people believed girls would not benefit from learning in the same way as boys. And I smiled on the inside, cautiously optimistic that this student was transferring her understanding from a unit we had done on “fairness” to our everyday shared reading.

When I decided to teach a social studies unit on “fairness” as a jumping off point for talking about justice, I was conflicted.

On the one hand, I believe it is important for young children to understand they have a role in creating a more just society — and that children have been present in movements to stamp out injustice, with the Civil Rights Movement and the antiapartheid movement in South Africa being just two examples.

On the other hand, I lacked confidence that the unit could be a success. Although I had good rapport with my 16 students, all of them African-American like myself, I was new to teaching first grade. I was not convinced I could convey the concepts that would get across my two key goals. My first goal was to help my students understand that children can work for change despite their ages. My second goal was to underscore that fairness and justice are not just global concepts, but that students can take action in their own corner of the world to right a wrong.