It's tough to be a principled adult educator these days. While the federal and state departments of education continue to obsess over standardized testing, we're still striving to make the classroom a place to question the world we live in and envision a different one. How d0 you make room for social justice in your lesson plans in such a world? I'm not sure I know the answer, but I can say one thing: it has never been more important to try. What follows is an account of a time I tried, and mostly succeeded, in what Paolo Freire calls "teaching the word and the world."

It was October 2002, and the Janitors of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 615 had just gone out on strike. Because I was teaching ESOL to workers in a union hall, I decided it would be important to put some images of the strike up on the walls of the classroom to provoke discussion. As is so often the case, my class didn't need much prodding. As I put the pictures up, I heard one student telling another she was going to try to get a job at one of the companies where workers were picketing. "A friend of mine is going today," she said, "and I need to get a job now." Another student responded, "Yeah, only a few people went out [on strike] at my workplace. I'm not going."

My students are men and women from Latin America and Eastern Europe, some Teamsters, most not. Some are housekeepers at nonunion shops; some are unemployed and looking for work in whatever they can find to pay the bills. I didn't realize it until that moment, but one of my students was in SEIU Local 615—and not striking. I wanted to equip my class with the appropriate vocabulary to talk about unions, contracts, and the strike, but I also wanted to open up a discussion about what it means to be supportive of fellow workers in today's desperate job market. Above all, I wanted to be clear that the actions students were talking about are considered antiworker by the labor movement, and I wanted them to understand why.

Solidarity
I began the following class by writing the word "solidarity" on the board and asking students what they thought it meant. From their varied experiences, many already were familiar with the word. Some suggested definitions: "fight for freedom," "people helping each other."

Next I presented a handout I made that defined the words "scab" and "strikebreaker." We had just been studying the differences between the verbs "want" and "need," so I phrased the handout to reflect this. I peppered my grammar practice sheets with strike examples for the next few lessons. In the multilingual discussions that followed, it was exciting to see that I didn't have to be the only one arguing for supporting the strikers. Two of my students were vociferously pro-union; another eloquently explained that even when you are desperate for work, you could always try to look someplace other than where workers are striking, because "immigrants, we have to stick together."

We used this one day's lesson as a jumping off point to discuss what rights you have in a unionized workplace and what rights you have in one that is not. I continued to bring information into the classroom about the strike's progress; more important, I noticed that students were sharing opinions about it.

I've been learning as I do this work that there are many different actions we could categorize as positive outcomes. So I wasn't devastated when my students didn't all suddenly decide to stand out on the picket line. Sure, I was disappointed that the SEIU member never did change her mind about the significance of working while her co-workers struck, but it would have taken a lot more than a few classes for that to have happened. I was excited to see how some union members felt more proud of their unions, and how others became enthusiastic about workplace justice. Some students even began to talk about organizing the places they work.

The janitors ended their strike in November of 2002, claiming substantial gains in their new contract. But there are plenty of other issues of social justice that remain unresolved, in their workplaces, in the other workplaces of our students, in the labor movement, and beyond. From the war on Iraq to the war on terrorism; from the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) to the World Trade Organization (WTO); from violence against union organizers to the struggle for a living wage—there are hundreds of fights at local, national, and international levels that we can discuss with our students. I hope that out of these discussions students will gain not just a greater knowledge of English, but a greater desire to make social justice grow, too.

Amy Battisti-Ashé has stubbornly remained in adult education for 13 years, with the goal of developing the leadership skills of up-and-coming activists within the labor movement and the immigrant communities of the Boston area. She is an ESL instructor / community organizer at Teamsters Local 25 in Charlestown and can be reached at: AmyB@teamsterslocal25.com.