What Happens When You Awaken a Sense of Civic Engagement in Students?

What happens when you awaken a sense of civic engagement in students? When a teacher gives a call to action across a network of empowered , empassioned and engaged colleagues? They have a party!

#MYParty12

The Invitation

Let’s Talk Politics!

“2012 should be the year we leverage politics to teach media literacy & critical thinking in the classroom”

Students began diving deeply into learning about media bias, campaign techniques and thinking deeply about what they themselves believe.  Read Mike Kaechele, facilitator at Kent Innovation High's, blog post detailing "What My Student's Believe About Politics"

Students began to formulate their party platforms and even to discuss them at home.

Middle School students at APEX in Indiana  rocked the vote by registering high schools students and assisting with voter registration at a local community center.

Ypsilanti New Tech students got involved in an issue that deeply affects them, district consolidation, and presented their findings to the school board.

Students across the country have been tweeting together every debate, with several schools hosting debate parties. After learning all day at school, then going to various practices, rehearsals or work, students met back at the school to watch & tweet the debates with their classmates and teachers.

Warren New Tech High Students

Insights from the students debate watching

See complete 1st Debate archive here

See complete VP debate tweet archive here

See complete 2nd debate archive here

The students were APPALLED by the lack of civility in these debates, definitely a big take-away !

After much critical thinking surrounding the debates, students began to prepare their own stump speeches and got busy story boarding and filming their commercials. Read more about that process in this article from mLive

Each of the schools involved had students select the best campaign commercials and platforms and submit them to this playlist.

On October 29th from 10am to 11am EST students will be tweeting @BarackObama and @MittRomney with their concerns, issues and/or support.

On November 2nd at noon EST the top 5 student candidates will debate via a Google+ Hangout so that students everywhere can evaluate the debate along with the commercials & platforms of each of these groups before final voting across the network begins.

We will also be voting via a poll inside Echo on actual Election Day for President of the United States! It should be very exciting to watch those votes roll in live.

Three of the many great joys of this project have been watching teachers across the country collaborate via Echo,  Skype & Twitter, watching students investigating, evaluating and communicating on issues about which they are passionate and anticipating how these connections will continue beyond the scope of this project.

These stories are just a small part of the bridges being built by teachers & students during this project, I can't wait to see what these amazing, engaged, fearless educators and students do next! 

Photo from @jschackow



 

"Was This Debate Civil?: Observations from HS Students

Last night I fired up my tweetchat using the #MYParty12 hashtag. I knew some schools & students in the New Tech Network were planning on tweeting using it since many of them are in the middle of a project exploring the Election, Government & Civic Responsibility.

I wasn't sure how many students would participate, we continue to hear that the young are apathetic about politics.

 Wow! Over 500 tweets flew across my screen, they were flying as fast at the #edchat feed! Here are a few student observations:

This is just a small sampling of what the students had to say. You can catch the complete stream at this storify archive . (Did you know if you add /slideshow to the storify url you can view as a slideshow? I like reading it better that way)
Some tweets from students that stood out to me were around civility, lack of debate protocol and simple good manners.  I wonder if, as a voter for over 2 decades,  I haven't become somewhat calloused to the lack of civility in this debate process.  The eyes of the students provided a fresh view for me. New Tech Network students are steeped in the words "trust, respect & responsibility". I'm thinking the candidates could benefit from a workshop led by them!

 

Keep following #MYParty12, these students are in this for the long haul, they are creating their OWN parties & platforms based on the issues they believe to be important.

Moving from "Have To" to "Want To"

My mind keeps going  back to last night's #PBLChat topic "Projects that Promote Civic Engagement". As always it was a good discussion, many resources were shared, but the big question for me was how to we move from students MUST do community service to students WANT to serve their community. As a point of clarification, I view the word community broadly, it can mean your school community, neighborhood, city, state, or even global community.
During the chat, Ryan Folmer shared a question he often asks students "Why does this matter?", Another chatter later tweeted an adaptation to that question, "Why does this matter, to me?"
I wonder if this is the key to getting students actively engaged in civic matters. In pondering this topic, I thought back through the years on times when I became involved in civic matters and what was the catalyst that made me get involved.
When I was in 4th grade, I met a girl at Camp Tecumseh who had a little brother with Down's Syndrome when he came to visit,  he used sign language to communicate, he was a wonderful 4year old boy who was happy to teach me the signs he knew. As I returned from camp, I volunteered at the local "Opportunity Center" teaching simple signs of basic sight words to pre-school students. What made me do this? Relationships, a personal connection the elicited a passionate response.
In high school I was in Senior Government class with a teacher I have tremendous respect for, Ron Shepherd. It was the beginning of second semester when the school announced that ROTC would be cancelled for 2nd semester and the program was closing. After this announcement came over the PA, I lamented that this was awful, what were the students in this program to do, their interest, their passion was being closed off to them. Mr Shepherd looked me in the eye and said, "Oh what a difference your pity makes, you will still cheer at the game on Friday, go to Prom and live on. Do you feel strongly enough to take any action?" I asked to be excused, went to the office, asked how many students were needed to keep the program for the semester. The answer was two. I quickly found my BFF, convinced her to drop her study hall like I was going to do and join ROTC. This is how I became a 1 semester member of ROTC. So a small act of civic engagement instigated by a challenge thrown down to not just talk, but take action.
In my adult life almost all of my civic engagement has been around children or education, I've worked to pass a referendum for a new school in our community when we lived in South Carolina, written letters (emails & tweets these days) to my senators or congressman about various issues around education, early childhood education and funding. If it is a cause I believe in I will take action. (Thank you mom, dad and Mr. Shepherd).
So when I look back and ask the question "Why did these things matter to me?" I can see that I taught sign language because my friend mattered to me, I joined ROTC because my teacher mattered to me, all of the action I've taken in the past few decades have been because children matter to me. I learned many other things about myself and the world through taking these actions, but initially it was the people who mattered to me that caused my actions.
What matters to you? What matters to your students? Why does it matter? Ask questions, have discussions, listen. Find out what matters and take action! Perhaps this is the key for moving our students from "have to" to "want to."