Tag: 21-A1

I had a constructive experience in my high school US government class that I will never forget. Our class spent the bulk of our school year learning about the various moving parts and pieces of the US’ representative system of government. We were predominately working from a text book for most of the class, and were graded on quizzes, tests and essay responses if my memory serves me right. Towards the end of the school year, our teacher introduced us students to an exercise that was quite different from the learning sequences that we had been accustomed to.

The exercise was arranged so that our entire class was broken up into groups (3-4 students per group). There was a list of federally funded government agencies and students wrote their name down on a government agency they wanted to support (Department of Education, Depaertment of Transportation, Military, etc). One group of students was assigned to act as if they were president Obama. Groups of students that represented government agencies were provided with a list of priorities that they needed funding for. The ‘Obama’ group was given a finite amount of money to spend on the needs of the government agencies. The activity was then based on different ‘federal government agency’ groups reasoning with the ‘Obama’ group to provide them with funding for their program. In the end, there were few ‘federal government agency’ groups that were able to obtain enough funding to suffice for all of their demands.

The exercise proved to be a useful one in a few different ways. Through a lens of personal reasoning processes, students put pressure one another through discussion, with which they had to then rationalize and resolve issues. The activity demonstrated the complexities associated with governance, but also presented the importance of what it means to be an involved citizen. 

While the exercise gave us students an opportunity to see some of the struggles associated with organizing federal funds, our teacher’s main use of the exercise was to persuade us to take a deeper look at where our personal values lie with regard to government. After the activity, I remember our teacher following up with a lecture that focused on the powerful capabilities that voting has in our democratic world. As a class we discussed why it is important to be a cognizant citizen, why it is important to vote at all levels (federal, state, municipal), and why it is important to form an opinion on current issues/politics. 

While the activity may have been short lived and limited in its own nature, it had a lasting impact on me with regard to its elements of self-observation in a problem solving setting. We didn’t just learn about how the government works, we went the distance and were given an opportunity to make decisions based on our opinions and judgments of what we had learned. We were given the chance to think introspectively. We then got to see the impact of these decisions, and speculate how things could have gone differently if the circumstances were changed. 

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

My favorite classes in my 12 years of public school were taught by the same instructor, who I shall call Mr L in this post. Mr L was my high school history and civics teacher. I was lucky enough to have him two years in a row due to an experiment my school did in which students had the same teachers for core classes (Math, Science, English, History) as they moved through the first two years of high school. Because of this we were able to have curriculum that was built over the course of years instead of months and our teacher knew exactly where we were in the course material. We were able to dig much deeper into questions of government, economics, and culture because of this arrangement.

Mr L capitalized on our two years together by creating a long-term project in our second year. For four months we worked on “worldbuilding” by creating a nation of our own. We were encouraged to draw maps, design currency, write about our government, develop our own culture, history, and values for our nations. So much of the project was visually based, those with art skills developed beautiful fake currency bills and elaborate maps. Those with technical drawing abilities were able to design elaborate flags. Some classmates of mine with musical abilities created their own national anthems.

While we were encouraged to build and develop these fantasy nations through many different medias the core of the project was framed through writing. Mr L encouraged us to be creative in our writing by presenting our writing as a text book or encyclopedia entry, a travelogue, a journal, or in a narrative of our choosing to convey the information. Within these narratives we also learned to draft our own constitutions, bill of rights, and charters. We also gave short writing excerpts from the culture of our nations a few lines of poetry, a prayer from a fiction religion or sect of our a real religion, quotes from famous people, and phrases and superstitions. Some of my more ambitious classmates developed a made up language and alphabet.

Over the course of the four months that we work on this project, Mr L would take a week or two for each category of our nations and how that category pertained to our knowledge of the world. For example when it came to writing constitutions we spent two weeks examining the US constitution and some other examples such as Magna Carter before writing our own versions. When it came time develop our system of government we reviewed terms such as monarchy, republic, theocracy, etc before crafting our own system.

This project was a success for me and my classmates. Despite this happening over 20 years ago I still actively remember my own and other’s creations. I think that it was so successful and memorable because we as students were given a project where we could be autonomous in our creations but were also scaffold in a way that we were supported with the background information of the related subjects. We became confident and competent in the subject material because we were able to make it our own. Rarely have I seen a better project than this for engaging student in civics and history. I hope to use my own version of this project in future classes.

Photo by Muhammad Haikal Sjukri on Unsplash

One of the most effective and engaging learning experiences I had was in a high school history class. What sticks with me the most was a two-part research assignment that involved students putting together a newspaper and brochure relating to the fallout of World War II. The goal of this assignment (and the part that resonated with me) was that the teacher tasked us to find topics outside of what we talked about in class, or to significantly elaborate on already-discussed topics.

Before delving into what made the assignment so effective, I want to describe how I approached the assignment and why. When my teacher introduced the assignment, I remember jittering with excitement. Immediately, I knew I was going to research Taiwan because at the time, I was confused about the relationship between Taiwan and China. I had many friends who distinctly identified as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, but I never understood why this was the case. When starting the assignment, I wondered how I could relate Taiwan to the fallout of World War II, but after preliminary research, I discovered that Taiwan and China were major players to the United States’ containment policies.

The final products of the assignment were a detailed newspaper article and a brochure that distinguished key points from the article. For the newspaper part of the assignment, I wrote over 1,000 words (which is a lot for a high school student) because I was passionate about researching the topic. The brochure part of the assignment had me print a finished product and share copies of it with the class. Researching Taiwan and connecting it to containment allowed me to research a topic that I genuinely wanted to learn about, and it got me excited to learn more history, even beyond this topic!

While taking education classes at the graduate level, it makes sense to me why I remember this assignment so fondly. What comes to mind is self-determination theory (hereafter SDT) because this assignment exceeded at promoting autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Below is a list and brief description of how each element of SDT was met:

1. Autonomy was the very essence of this assignment because students were tasked with researching any topic that related to the fallout of World War II. Not only that, but students were encouraged to research topics that were barely (or not at all) discussed in class. The teacher made it perfectly clear that this assignment encouraged autonomy.
2. For me, and many others, this assignment excelled at satisfying competence. Unlike most instances of high school research, I went beyond just using what was on Wikipedia. Particularly, the teacher helped me look into the notes at the bottom of Wikipedia pages to find even more information on my topic. This enabled me to utilize dense, collegiate-level resources that were challenging to interpret. Despite being an immense challenge, I was able to derive meaning from these sources and use them to enhance my research.
3. This assignment facilitated relatedness because I genuinely wanted to learn more about Taiwan. Before conducting my research, I wondered why my Taiwanese friends spoke Chinese, but were offended to be called Chinese. By learning about the history between Taiwan and China, my Taiwanese friends’ offense made much more sense to me. Not only did I understand history that related to my friends, but I had a much better sense of the then-current political affairs between Taiwan and China.

Despite doing this assignment over five years ago, I remember it with much detail and hope to implement something similar in my future classes. Assignments like this remind me how important it is to take research-based practices into account when designing lessons.

Featured Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Featured image by Anna Nekrashevich from Pexels

When I think of high school, among my most important classes was my AP Government class. The best way I could learn history, government etc… was both to explore the details that make up the subject as well as experimentation with how this subject can be used practically. My teacher, Mr. Yeager, would allow us to really delve into particular aspects of US structure and political science. Our goal in this class was to find ways to not just understand how these principles worked but how they could be experimented with and applied to our lives. One of our assessments was to give a Lincoln-Douglas style debate on a current political issue while exploring the history and details linked to the subject matter. I was interested in doing a debate on Gun Control/Gun Rights and he encouraged us to play devil’s advocate and argue for a side we didn’t necessarily agree with. This was during 2016 when tensions were high in the USA and I admire my teacher for giving us the chance to really explore how the political process worked and the human element that tied us together. Being able to see past political lines and just come together as human beings was something that stuck with me, and something I want to encourage in my classrooms to create a strong sense of community and belonging.

Another activity that really helped was when we studied the stock market and basic economics. We learned context information from our textbook that explored how the stock market formed and what it does economically. We were then tasked with following a particular company such as Apple or Microsoft and then seeing how the stock did over the next few days, weeks and months. All the while, we made predictions and were tasked with thinking like economists while making speculative guesses. We didn’t just study these subjects, we lived them and saw them working in action. This sort of practical application of knowledge was helpful for me as it helped abstract ideas become tangible concepts.

A final element of my teacher’s AP Government class was seen when he asked us to perform a mock trial. I was tasked as being a member of the jury and watching the arguments presented by a fake DA and a fake defendant with the teacher as the judge and moderator. Just before we had watched Twelve Angry Men and read about a series of famous trials in history. This sort of roleplaying exercise lasted a week. It was fascinating that even when the DA went off script with extra accusations while the defense improvised by bringing in new evidence that the teacher allowed us to continue with only occasional interruption to help stimulate a real trial. This worked because it all felt very real, not a fabricated simulation. We learned a lot about how court cases were managed, far more than we would have learned just from reading a book. The engagement came from personal stakes in what was occurring and how it could be witnessed in real life.

The lesson behind this post is the idea that in order to really explore something, it’s not enough to just absorb lots of information. It’s about applying the information and using it in practical ways. This is what adolescents will have to do as adults and I think that it is quite important to encourage exciting exercises like this in the classroom. This makes learning not only practical but something they can use for the rest of their lives.