Pre-K Students Explore Justice and Community Through Storytelling

By Lisa Brosnan

In my Pre-K class at Tubman Elementary, I use children’s literature to help my young students engage with big ideas about fairness, inclusion, and community.

For the Black Lives Matter Week of Action, we read One by Kathryn Otoshi and talked about how communities take care of one another. I discussed with the students how we intervene when we see an injustice or someone being treated unfairly. I connected the story to incidents in the classroom as well as many parents’ decision to participate in the ‘Day Without Immigrants’ protest.

Inspired by the lesson, students created anti-bullying posters to display around the school.

The class also read Milo’s Museum by Zetta Elliott, which sparked a discussion about representation and storytelling in museums. 

We talked about how and why items end up in a museum and what the students would choose to put in a museum. I connected the lesson to our visit to the National Museum of Women in the Arts and how museums reflect culture (or lack thereof). The students [wrote] about what they would choose to put in a museum and why.

Books are a powerful tool for introducing social justice topics to young children. “My students are quite young, so sometimes it can be tricky finding an entry point to discussing big-picture topics with them. Books are such a great way to discuss concepts that might be more than they can understand.

I also incorporate books like It’s Okay to Be Different, Julian Is a Mermaid, Jacob’s Room to Choose, Hair Love, and Don’t Touch My Hair as part of the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action. These stories help students engage with the 13 Guiding Principles of Black Lives Matter at School.

I think young students possess the capacity to understand a lot. The task is just to break it down for their age and limited world experience.