The Power Project: Equipping Students to Use Their Power for Positive Change

School librarians and public librarians working with youth are in a unique position to help students gain opportunities to use their power for positive change. Cassy Lee, a high school librarian at Taipei American School in Taiwan, will present on the project that won the 2020 AASL Roald Dahl's Miss Honey Social Justice Award, given each year in recognition of a collaboratively designed lesson, event, or course of study on social justice using school library resources.
In this month-long capstone experience for 8th graders at her last school, Chinese American International School, designed in collaboration with the Social Studies and Language Arts teachers, students learned how social movements have worked for change in the past, then researched a social justice issue they are passionate about and discovered the current organizations and people using their power to make positive change on that issue. Embedded throughout are information literacy skills and social justice standards that will increase students’ ability to recognize and disrupt patterns of inequity in our society. After their research, they participate in promoting a compelling call to action.
The Power Project plants the seeds for students to recognize they can make change on issues that matter to them. This session will cover the collaborative process, resources and tools used to make this an effective and powerful experience for the students and will spark ideas for how you, too, might design a project that builds agency for your students to engage in social justice work (even if it's not a month-long capstone project! You can start small and build from there!).