Familiarize yourself with the seven principles of Catholic social teaching. If you are going to use the principles in your classroom, you need to understand them. Focus more heavily on principles that relate to your content area. For instance, if you teach science, you might not have any way to incorporate "option for the poor and vulnerable," but environmental studies and bioethics provide gateways for "care for God's creation" and "life and dignity of the human person."
Review your standards, textbooks, class novels and other course materials to determine which relate to the principles of Catholic social teaching. Social studies teachers, for instance, might incorporate a lesson on the rights of workers into a unit about the Industrial Revolution, while English teachers might explain the principle of solidarity with the oppressed while teaching "To Kill a Mockingbird." Incorporate Catholic social teaching into as many areas as possible so it is an integral part of your curriculum rather than a one-day lesson.
Study the reasoning behind the principles you will teach in the classroom. Students may have an instinctive understanding that taking care of the environment is good, but not be able to articulate why the church teaches the same thing. Conversely, students may rebel against Catholic social teaching on controversial issues such as abortion or euthanasia without truly understanding why the the church teaches as it does. By providing the students with a basic background in the philosophy of Catholic social teaching, you will arm them with the tools they need to argue against attacks on the Catholic view of a just society.
Give the students concrete examples of the principle you are teaching. Bring in newspaper or magazine articles about current events relating to Catholic social teaching. Have the students read firsthand accounts of individuals suffering from prejudice or poverty. Provide historical examples of times society violated Catholic social teaching and what Christians did to battle those violations. It is easier for students to understand the concrete than the abstract.
Encourage discussion, debate and participation instead of relying on pure lecture or rote, fact-based questions. Children and adolescents tend to have a strong sense of fairness that will make them more likely to want to talk about ideas of justice, and adolescents in particular are forming their own personal ideologies and will respond better to participatory activities that allow them to express their own ideas.