Episode 96: Teaching About Social Justice with Shelby Kretz of Little Justice Leaders

Dr. Shelby Kretz is the creator of Little Justice Leaders, an organization that provides social justice education resources for families, educators, and schools. Shelby earned her Ph.D. in Education from UCLA, and her research explores social justice education at the elementary school level. Over the past decade, Shelby has worked with thousands of parents, teachers, and school leaders to bring social justice education to elementary aged kids.

In this episode, we discuss the importance of addressing biases at an early age and some tips for running an education business.

Download the Little Justice Leaders guide for talking about current events.

 
 
 
 
 

Read the transcript for this episode:

Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.

Lily Jones

Dr Shelby Kretz is the creator of little justice leaders, an organization that provides social justice education resources for families, educators and schools. Shelby earned her PhD in education from UCLA, and her research explores Social Justice Education at the elementary school level. Over the past decade, Shelby has worked with 1000s of parents, teachers and school leaders to bring social justice education to elementary aged kids. Welcome, Shelby, so nice to have you here.

Shelby Kretz

Thank you, Lily. I'm so excited to be here and have this conversation.

Lily Jones

Me too. Well, if you can start us off by just giving us a snapshot or a longer snapshot of your professional journey, that would be awesome.

Lily Jones

Yeah,

Shelby Kretz

Yeah, absolutely. So I've worked in education and out of the classroom and in many capacities. My career started in after school programming, so I worked and facilitated and then ran after school programs for girls in Ohio and eventually led me to school counselor position in the college prep program, and then I went back to school to get my PhD in education. So I just recently graduated with that from UCLA and my research there. Thank you. And so I worked with teachers, families, students, in many capacities there, and my research was focused on social justice and elementary education. So how elementary school teachers were bringing social justice into their classrooms, and kind of all of this work led me to creating little justice leaders, which is my organization that does social justice education programming for families and educators. So we've been going for about six years providing resources for parents, caregivers and teachers on how to talk to elementary school students about big, complex topics of social justice that are happening in the world. So important. And I love how it came out of your studies, too. I'm curious, just like, how or why you decided to go the route of creating your own organization. Was that always something that you had in mind, or did that kind of arise naturally through the process? Yeah, so I've always been interested in starting something. It's kind of just in my nature, I think, to some extent. But I also at the time, it was around the 2016 election year when it really started to hit me that this was a huge problem, because I started hearing from so many educators I was working with and so many parents that they just didn't know how to talk to younger kids about what they were hearing in the media, what they were seeing, kind of regardless of where they where they were on their political spectrum, and a lot of them just weren't talking about it. And I thought, you know, this is a huge missed opportunity, and also a real potential for misinformation, confusion, fear, bias to be developing in our youngest kids, because they're getting information from sources that really aren't very trustworthy online. And so I started looking for resources, kind of asking people like, what are you doing? Where are you turning to? Where do you get information on how to do this? And the answer was always just that they were struggling to find it. And so I just started kind of putting out information and saying, Hey, here's how you can start having these conversations with kids. Here's how to bring it, you know, into the classroom. And this was, this was two years later, so I didn't even start little justice leaders until 2018 but it was that long of me searching and looking. And it's not that there are no resources. There certainly are, and there are really good ones, and definitely more today than there were back then, but they're just particularly for elementary there wasn't as much in the language. A lot of the resources were focused on older students and or not centered in justice, just a little more focused on information, which is so important, and digital literacy, which is super important, but also, like so many folks, want to pass on their their love for justice, their passion for creating a better world. And I just wasn't seeing that combination.

Lily Jones

I agree. It's interesting thinking back to like, to that time around the election I had my son was born in 2015 and I have a daughter who was born 2012 and so I remember, like her preschool parent friends were asking me for resources of just like, what do you do exactly? It's to give them, like, some sense of this at a young level. And, you know, I never heard him before. Actually, my first business was called Curiosity Forever, and I created these, like activity packs for kids. So I did this, like change Makers Club, which was all kids being change makers, like new examples, but it was interesting just thinking about like that moment in time, like, I also agree that at that moment I was like, I just really don't see things out there, and it's really affirming and awesome to see things like your organization, you know, just really grow, you know, from that moment and, of course, before, but just seeing that there has been, you know, a bit of a shift in that area,

Shelby Kretz

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think there is a lot more interest. I mean, a lot more people are asking the question, which is a good thing, but they're asking because we have four year olds who are overhearing these horrific news stories, or, you know, six year olds who have unfiltered access to the internet, and it's just becoming more and more of a problem. So I'm really glad to see more and more resources being created, because we need it

Lily Jones

Absolutely. And when you look as a grown up being like, Oh, how did people get to this point? Why is all of this happening? And like all this injustice, and like all these, you know, systems of oppression, and all these things like, you know, it all starts with kids too. I mean, of course, systems, but also kids and so I think thinking about reaching little kids is so powerful. So can you tell us a little bit about what Little Justice Leaders offers?

Shelby Kretz

Yes, absolutely. So historically, if you've known anything about us, you probably are thinking of us as a subscription box company, because that's how we started. So we did monthly boxes for parents and caregivers and educators, and every month was a topic of social justice. We did that for six years, and we just are closing down the monthly boxes now, just because we want to be able to offer our resources more sustainably and in a way that's going to be more accessible to everyone, more affordable. So now we have kind of two main offers. The first is our digital community. So this would be like if you were interested in the boxes before, this is a space for you. It is for parents, caregivers, educators, anyone who loves kids and is around kids and wants resources support and to be in community, like the space is meant to be co created, a sharing of resources, like what we just talked about. It's so hard to find resources on your own. That doesn't mean they're not out there, and so being in community with other folks who know about these things and can connect, and then also just a space for us to be able to share a lot of the resources that we've created over the past six years in partnership with so many incredible educator activists, so that that's our that's our that's our main thing. So that's the the little justice leaders, membership community, and it's, it's really incredible. There's some amazing resources in there. So highly recommend checking that out. The second thing is our schools program. So now we're thinking about how we work with schools in a more holistic way. So I've worked, you know, we've worked a lot with school leaders on school culture trainings, professional developments, curriculum over the past six years, and now we're being a little more systematic and looking for schools that want to think about social justice at a cultural level, and really reframing how you know, they center justice in their schools. And so that's a little justice of your schools program. So if you're a school leader, or you want to bring that to your school, that would also be something to check out. For sure.

Lily Jones

Those both sound amazing, and I love hearing about the evolution too. I also totally relate to this. When I was doing Curiosity Forever, I did these Curiosity Packs for the first couple years, which were monthly boxes. And I always say that I stuff because, like, mail was consuming my life. Yeah, it's like, I cannot deal. Like we were living in an 800 square foot house with, like, then had two kids and a dog, and I was like, I can't have all these packages!

Shelby Kretz

Right? It's so hard to keep it going, and then it's so expensive to run. If you're not, like, Amazon, you can't get free shipping and all the things.

Lily Jones

I know. Just like the math of it wasn't mathing, you know, being like, shipping. I mean shipping in particular, I was like, I can't charge more for shipping than I do for the box.

Shelby Kretz

Exactly. And then I mean just the for teachers, who often are, you know, not getting paid obviously, what they should -- to be, asking them to pay out of pocket for these kind of resources was so hard for me.

Lily Jones

Yes, but I love the digital community. I mean, I think that's a smart move for everyone, like for you and for you know, the people that you work with, because, like, it's much more direct, like you were saying, like it was just like sharing these resources, like, we now have our educator forever network community, which is like, similarly, like educators to get together with, and like a community that people can learn from and with. But I think, like, it's so much more direct than being like, Okay, I'm going to print this, and then I'm going to do this, and then maybe, if I had a great idea, like, far into the process, it doesn't get there. And so I think there's something about being a digital community that really allows for co-creation and more, like rich relationships.

Shelby Kretz

Exactly. It does, like someone can ask for a resource today, and, you know, in theory, we could have it up next week. Or, you know, I think the other thing too, is like access to the information you need right when you need it, like if you're having a problem with racism in your classroom, you can't wait for our anti racism box. You don't know when that's coming or if that's coming. But in the community, you can log in and say, "Okay, what resources are here now?" And get what you need right away.

Lily Jones

Absolutely, I love it. And so we've talked about this a little bit, but I'd love to hear from you just why is it so important for kids to know about social justice topics?

Shelby Kretz

Yeah, absolutely. So I think a few things I would have said this before kids even had this unfiltered access to the internet. I think it's important because we know from research that kids are developing bias as early as age four, and so if we are not counteracting that bias, then what we're doing is compounding it. And when we wait until they're 14 or 18 even to start these conversations, that's 10 years or more, that they've had these biases being reinforced by society because we live in a biased and unjust society. And so if we aren't taking active steps, then essentially we're adding on layers and layers and layers that our children will then have to unlearn, that so many of us as adults have had to do, and the more we just normalize and start the conversations when they're younger, the less they get burdened with all of that bias, all of that, those kind of layers that they're going to eventually have to peel back if they want to, you know, step into the real world and focus on care about justice and care about community and people. That being said, this is so much worse now, because not only are kids developing kind of that natural bias, of like I said, starting at four years old, research is showing kids demonstrating racial and gender biases, but now it's being particularly exploited and intentionally exploited with sites like YouTube. So there are folks who are quite intentionally using those types of platforms to radicalize children, to slowly, kind of introduce them to various topics in ways that you know are probably not what you want them seeing as as an adult who cares about them, and so I think that's a huge concern. And if we don't ask the question, if we don't have the conversation, we might not catch this. And this is particularly, you know, scary for like, pre teen age kids as well. But even with younger kids, the misinformation, the disinformation, most adults nowadays can't even decipher what's real and what's not on the internet. And so how can we expect a six year old, an eight year old, even a 15 year old, to do that without our help, without our support? It's just not possible. And so making sure that they have a trusted person, they can ask, Hey, I heard about this thing, you know, that's going on in the world, or, Hey, I saw this article, I heard this news story, really scared me, but if you shut them down, when they ask about it, because it makes us uncomfortable, because it does, but so if you shut them down, then they feel like, okay, well, you know, I can't ask my parent, I can't ask my aunt, uncle, grandparent, teacher, whoever it is. So I'm going to make sense of this with the information I have online and my friends, my peers, and that's what we see happening. And so I would encourage people to really think through, like, the potential, you know, outcome of that. If, like I said, you want to start this conversation when they're 18, it's, it's way too late.

Lily Jones

Mm, hmm, absolutely. I mean both inspiring and frightening. Exactly. As the parent of nine and 12 year old, I absolutely see that. And I think that having, you know, even when I have what I think is like, um, supervised YouTube time, yeah, you know, then I'm like, wait, what you know, like, what is that? Yes. And so I think having those conversations and also like developing this kind of like, like awareness and almost like moral compass too. Yeah, where kids, if you've been having these conversations all along, when they see something that goes against, you know, all these things that they've been talking about, they're able to then point it out, you know, like, Wait, what is, what is this, rather than just accepting it as normal? And so I think that's just like such a good perspective for everybody to think about making it normal from the very beginning, to have these conversations and develop this critical eye, exactly?

Shelby Kretz

And I feel, you know, I focused kind of on the scary part there, but I think there's so much like positive side to it too, right? Like having kids who who care about other people, who have really strong empathy skills, who have a really deep social awareness of of how the world works and how to interact with people in very respectful and caring ways. Like that is such a valuable skill. For young people, for anyone, and it's beautiful when you see your kids having it. I hear, you know, so many people who their kids will call them out for not being inclusive, or for using, you know, language that's not inclusive. And those moments are just so beautiful when you see your kids like really challenging societal norms and even challenging us as adults to be better, and who doesn't want to raise kids like that?

Lily Jones

Yes, absolutely. I've had many moments with my kids just like, you know, where it's like, you know, recently I was like, Oh, this woman across the street or something, they're like, You don't know that. That's a woman

Shelby Kretz

I love that, right? Like, thank

Lily Jones

you. You know, I don't know that. And so it's really affirming and awesome to see young kids that have this very strong perspective, or I shared the other day, like my son, who signed he just automatically calls everybody they as their pronouns, even if he knows their pronouns. Like my sister, who goes by she her pronouns, yeah. Like, he's just like, Okay, what do they want? And I'm like, great, cool. Like, it's awesome how that's just, like a part of your life now where I have to, you know, intentionally, sometimes be like, I'm going to use they them, if I'm not sure, you know, and so, yeah, definitely really cool to see kids be empowered in this way.

Shelby Kretz

Absolutely, I love that so much. And I think that's just an example of how it's sometimes easier for them, like I said, if they're not peeling back 20 years of, you know, like norms and standards that they've learned, it's so much harder for us to kind of step back and make those intentional choices, and sometimes easier for them, because they just start doing it when they're young and they don't have to unlearn every all of All of the, you know, the mess

Lily Jones

and having those harder conversations at the beginning can prevent that uncomfortable peeling back, you know, I think that just seeing that perspective can really, you know, make the point to families, to teachers that like, yeah, it's really worth it, even though Sometimes these conversations can be really hard, and so I'm wondering what advice you have for teachers or families who want to broach social justice topics with young children?

Shelby Kretz

Yeah, definitely, it certainly can be hard. It's intimidating for us, like I said, we're still often peeling back the layers ourselves, and kids will ask all the questions that maybe we're not prepared for and have no idea how to respond to that being said, the more we do it, the more comfortable we become. I think the first step is trying to educate yourself, making sure you have some baseline knowledge of what you're going to try to talk about when possible and sometimes this is impossible, because sometimes our kids bring questions on us that we weren't ready for. But when you can try to educate yourself, the more you integrate kind of justice into your life. Follow some accounts that educate you about it, read a few books, you know, listen to some podcasts. Those types of things will help you feel more secure, more confident in answering those types of questions. The other thing is, like you can and should start really small. So if we're talking about young kids, this might just look like diversifying their bookshelf, making sure that the books you're reading are actually inclusive. So that doesn't mean having a few characters of color, but books that center characters of color. Books that center characters with disabilities, characters of various genders, characters of you know, all different types of diversity. So thinking of like immigration status, language, all of those things, when you really start to add that in, then it becomes so normalized for them. It becomes so normalized for them when they just see folks of all different identities, just living their lives in the stories they read and the stories they watch. And so that as they get older, when you introduce topics, for example, of injustice, like racism, what we want is for that to not make sense with their worldview. We want them to have, like, a strong negative reaction to realizing that that's how the world works. We want them to be enraged. We want them to be confused. And if the first time we introduce race to them, it's in learning about racism, then they never have that moment to have it not make sense, right, especially if they haven't been surrounded by much diversity in their life. And this goes for any topic you could say the same for, you know, transgender identities, for example. So, yeah, start positive. Start positive. And this is the fun stuff too, like, just really fun stories, positive stories showing lots of representation. You don't have to jump into all the hard topics right away.

Lily Jones

So inspiring, absolutely. And I think I love this idea of just like, you know, even in a world of so much injustice, and we want kids to be outraged, and we want them to take action, like starting with the positive, and start. With, like, what we ideally want the world to be like. When I was teaching, I always thought about that as my classroom. Like, I was like, All right, like, this is like a little microcosm, like we can create the values of the systems that really support everybody, yeah, and so starting from that place, and then, of course, confronting all the things that we need to confront as well, but having that affirming part as well,

Shelby Kretz

Exactly. And I think you know that the affirming part is so important, like, you know, if you have if you're white and your kids are white, you can still have them, let's say, paint a self portrait, and have them mix their their skin color perfectly and try to find the perfect skin color. And you can notice that they probably have different skin color, even if they're siblings of the same race, right? And then you can celebrate that. Look at how all of us in our family have a different shade of, you know, tan skin. And isn't this beautiful? And now we can all make our self portraits, and it's just, it's affirming them who they are, their identity. It's affirming everyone around them, and that differences are good, like, just really reinforcing differences are good. Differences are beautiful, yeah, kind of breaking the idea that, like, we all have to be the same, or there's one way that's the right way, and one thing that's good. And this is really fun, because you can do it with so many arts and crafts. You can do it with coloring, like we bring art into so much of this work, like draw your family portrait. Draw and family broadly defined. Whoever you care about in your life that you consider family, they may or may not live with you. They may or may not be a big part of your life, but this is your family. Draw it and celebrate how all of our families look different. Kids love it because it's art, it's fun, it's crafts. And we think we have these lessons involved in like, it can just really be part of kind of the day to day. We can bring it in, or we're doing a craft about trees, and we can talk about how important nature is to our Earth, and why we should take care of our Earth. And then maybe we go outside and, you know, walk around and look up the types of trees that are around and celebrate Earth. Like there's just so many easy ways to bring this in that's actually fun. It doesn't always have to be like, let's sit down and have a talk about racism, or let's sit down and talk about transphobia. Like it can be so much lighter than that a lot of the time. And then sometimes, of course, it's heavy too,

Lily Jones

Yes. And having that intention, you know, and it doesn't have to be like these giant activities, just a different lens to put on your everyday conversations, you know, bring a little bit more intention or awareness to the messages that are coming through to the kids. Exactly, great ideas. And so I'd love to shift back to just your experience starting your own organization. What have you learned about yourself through the process?

Shelby Kretz

Oh, gosh, so much. It's been a wild ride over six years, but it's been so fun. I think for me, some of the biggest learning have just been and I'm still working on this one. But like self trust, like realizing Okay, people are actually coming to me for curriculum, for school, programs, for, you know, resources, coming to me and acting like I'm the expert that can feel very like disorienting. I think when I'm like, I don't know if I know everything. You know I know. I don't know everything, but being able to trust yourself, like, Trust yourself, trust your experience. I was actually talking with an educator today who kept you know, kind of discounting her experience, saying, like, I don't have any formal education in this. I'm like, wait, but you're an educator and you have experience, and that's so valuable. So learning to recognize that in yourself, I think it's so much easier to recognize it in other people, but you kind of have to if you're doing your own thing, because at some point you have to trust yourself to deliver. I think the other thing has been just learning my strengths and weaknesses. Like I think so many educators have different strengths, obviously, something with kids, without kids, writing, you know, engaging with certain activities. And sometimes, I think in the traditional classroom, we kind of all have to fit to a specific mold, which works and it's fun. But also, like for me, I've learned, like, the long hours of uninterrupted writing curriculum, or, you know, being able to brainstorm like a theme and create amazing collaborations with other folks, like those things I love so much, and so being able to really step back and say, Well, I love these parts of the work, or I don't love this parts and these parts of the work really helps you get to know yourself. And I think when you start your own organization, you're forced to do everything, so you really get to know what works and what doesn't.

Lily Jones

I definitely relate to both those points. Yeah, being a teacher is. So, like, you just kind of have to do everything. And so you know that you just kind of do a million things at once, right? So I also still, like, 12 years later, after leaving the classroom, I'm like, it's so dreamy on days when I can just, like, write curriculum.

Shelby Kretz

Yes, I love those days interrupted.

Lily Jones

I'm like, this is fantastic. I'm like, my pajamas, like creating a cool unit. So fun, exactly, yeah, I think that's just like the believing yourself, you know, part is also so huge. I used to have a poster that said, bet on you when I first started my business. Because, yeah, it's just so hard though. I mean, it sounds like, almost like it sounds easier than Lily is like layers of just being able to trust yourself. And I think part of that trusting yourself is like knowing that even if things don't go the way you wanted them to, or you make a mistake, or, like you do the wrong thing, like whatever, that you'll be able to figure it out exactly. So I think it's so related to, like resilience for me too, and it's an ongoing process. And I think, like just starting a business is such a personal development journey. I appreciate your reflections on that. And so thinking about people out there who might be listening, educators, who want to start their own businesses, what advice would you give them? Go for it. It's

Shelby Kretz

never going to feel like this is the time, this is the moment. I think just jump in. You can always, you know, do it on the side for a while. I did for a long while. And so you have, you know, some sense of security if you're not the type who wants to jump right into it, but just go for it. See, see what happens. I mean, when I started my business, I literally just started by posting on Instagram, like, Hey, do people want resources for talking to kids about social justice? And, you know, here's a few things, and the response I got was incredible. And I wouldn't have known that if I would have sat around thinking about it for a really long time, which, to be fair, I did that too. But, you know, once I started posting, it was like, oh, people really want this. And I put up a pre order link. I didn't have any product. I had nothing. I just wanted to see if people would pre order and actually give me money. And they did, and I was like, Oh, wow, I need a product now. But it's just, you know, sometimes that that affirmation, like from other folks to say, yeah, like, we want this, and it doesn't always come that quick, too. So don't give up if it, if it doesn't come quick, but just get started and see what happens.

Lily Jones

Taking action is truly magical. I think it's like, I also, you know, have thought about things many times for way too long. And I think that's, you know, sometimes part of the process too. But once you start taking action, and imperfect action is really where you get clarity of being like, oh, there's actual people out there who are interested in this thing. Yeah, I love, I always give that advice, and I still do the same, like, I don't, you know, sell anything really, you know, when it's been fully created, I'm like, Hey, do you want this thing? And then it's the motivation, yeah, you know, you have the money coming in to, like, fund you to create the thing? Yes. So I think that's the best way to do it. Even though it can feel terrifying, it'll actually, like make the thing happen for actual people who want it

Shelby Kretz

Exactly, exactly. It kind of forces you to do it. And I think now, especially nowadays, like you don't have to spend a lot of money, there's a lot of really simple to use tech tools that like you, you know it can take you a couple of hours to get set up or less. And yeah, in the past, I think there was just such a barrier of entry to starting a business, and so much of that is gone now, so we might as well take advantage of it

Lily Jones

absolutely. Well, Shelby, it was so awesome talking with you. Can you tell folks where they can connect with you? Yeah, absolutely.

Shelby Kretz

So probably the best place to connect with us is on Instagram. We share tons of free resources and support for educators and families. So check us out at little justice leaders, yeah, just lots of free resources. Really good stuff there. Same with our email list, even more free resources. And you know all of the things that you might need to start these conversations and get going you. And you can find that at LJ, l dot education, slash educator forever, so you can access our email list that way. And then we do our website, little justice leaders.com check that out as well, especially if you're interested in the membership community. But yeah, any anywhere online at little justice leaders, you can probably find us wonderful.

Lily Jones

We'll put all the links in the show notes as well.

Shelby Kretz

Great. All right. Thanks so much, Lily.

Lily Jones

Yeah. Thank you.

Shelby Kretz

Take care. You too. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Lily Jones