Jennifer Sarja, is a graduate from Southern's secondary Education program. She is currently a high school English Teacher in the New Haven community. Sarja came to Southern and spoke to students in the English and Secondary Education departments about her fight to implement social justice in her classrooms, as well as the education community.
Before Sarja came to Southern, she was living in California and working on her film adaption of Robert Cormier's The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, starring Elijah Wood. During this time she also created a teaching program in Los Angeles.
In 2004, she was invited to join a Women's Empowerment Delegation to Ethiopia and Uganda to record the groups journey. During her presentation at Southern, she told us that when the song "We are the World" came out and Live Aid was happening she was incredibly inspired. She wanted to be a part of helping causes.
Once she returned from Africa, she dedicated herself to helping teach the youth of America and instilling in them values of leadership and social justice. She opened YouhInkwell' Center for Writing. It was a place to teach about social justice issues through writing.
Sarja taught her students if they felt they noticed a problem in their life or in society they should do something about it. Sarja told us an endearing story of some of her fourth graders, who were unsatisfied with the new chairs she bought because the girl's in the class with long hair kept getting their hair caught in the screws of the chair. They complained to Sarja about the problem, and Sarja told them that the other chairs were too expensive. So the kids did some thinking and they wrote to the company that produced the chairs and the company sent them a whole bunch of new and better chairs that did not catch the girl's long hair. Sarja said it was a proud and funny moment. Her students recognized a problem, and while it might not have been related to social justice, they took an initiative to fix it, and they are only in fourth grade!
Sarja is the author of the book When Watute Wants Some Water. This book is a picture book explaining how a young girl in Africa cannot go to school because she needs to get water. Sarja, was explaining how one of the biggest issues in Africa's education system is the water. Many young girls like Watute cannot attend school, because they spend their days walking for miles back and forth between their homes and the area where they gather water. The water system in Africa is very poor. Until this is fixed many girls will remain out of school.
After a couple years, Sarja had to return to the east coast. Her time with YouthInkwell was the best, but family matters called her back. One she got back here, she needed to be certified to teach in the school system. She had to go back to school, and that is how she found her way to Southern. After Southern, she went on to teach in the New Haven school system.
Last year, she was teaching in Creed High School, which is a magnet school. The school had been threatened to be shut down once before, because the principal dropped out just before the school was starting out. The teachers worked extremely hard especially Sarja and managed to save the school. However, two years later the education board came back accusing budget cuts of being the reason they were going to shut down the school. That was not the only reason, though. Sarja was told the night before the school was being shut, that they did not have enough white students. This comes from the case Sheff vs. O'Neill. Jaqueline Rabe Thomas and Calrice Silber wrote in the CTMirror that case Sheff vs. O'Neill claimed "that poor and minority students in Hartford “suffer daily” from inequities caused by severe racial and economic isolation." Sarja's school was in jeopardy for the reason that it lacked the correct number of white students. Magnet schools are now supposed to have a 75% ethnic to 15% white ratio. So if the school is not within these percentages, it will be shut down.
As we listened to Sarja tell us this, we were enraged. Many students were expressing how unjust this is. The education system is unfairly preventing minority students from receiving a good education. It is absolutely absurd this is even an issue.
Sarja went on to tell us of all the ways she tries to teach social justice in the classroom. For instance, when threats of her school shutting down were being spread. She encouraged her students to write to officials and to use their voice to try and keep the school going. Sarja thinks it is so important to let your students know their voice matters. As an English teacher, she can use literature to help spread themes of social justice and then ask her students to respond to it.
Sarja's presentation was inspiring. The room full of future educators was moved by her accomplishments, we can only hope to be as influential in our classroom as Sarja has been.