Action Civics: Taking Action by Engaging Students in State Government - Joshua Parker & Brett Hansen

Hey folks, thanks for being here in this Track Talk where we're gonna consider this question, can students take informed action to impact state law? My name is Josh Parker, I'm an educator and curriculum writer and just generally a civics enthusiast and I really care about this question. I want students to be informed and I want them to take informed action and know what to do with it in our democracy. If you talk to teachers, you're gonna hear from them that students aren't coming to their classroom knowing how they can make an impact in democracy. But it's not just our students, it's also society in general. Here's one example from Pew Research. Of those who responded to the question, 47 percent believed that they couldn't make an impact. That's a problem. We live in a democracy and we want to make sure that our students, as we have them in our social studies classes and our civic classes, are coming to believe that they can influence government and know how to influence. There's widespread agreement about what the solution is to this problem of lack of belief or lack of understanding of civic involvement and the solution is civic education. And civic education can take lots of forms but one thing that's heartening is that it doesn't matter your political orientation. Democrats and Republicans are in agreement that civic education can have the most positive and meaningful impact on strengthening our democracy. And that's been taken up by civic education organizations such as Civics Now, who's done a lot of studying about what is effective civic education. There was a list of proven practices that they identified as the most effective civic education practices. Of those, four of them relate to what we're gonna share with you today very clearly. When students have to take courses that are deliberately are about civics and government, that has an impact on students civic education. Maybe that seems obvious but we haven't always had those courses that deliberately focus on that. We know that when students have the opportunity to deliberate current and controversial issues that that helps them develop skill on the civic participation. We know that when students do simulations of adult civic roles whether that's in the form of a simulated legislature in their classroom, whether it's in the form of a vote about some issue in their classroom, we know that those simulations help develop skill. And more so even than simulations, actually participating in civic processes help students know how to participate in civic processes. With a lot of this learning that we've done in the education field, social studies leaders got together and they created the C3 framework. And this framework is really meant to help states take what we've learned and incorporate it into their social studies standards. And so the C3 framework culminates through its inquiry process with taking informed action. Teachers have a lot of strategies and certainly a lot of resources to help them with this standard of helping students address a current local issue. One of the programs that I personally really enjoy and I've had a chance to work with is called Capital Classroom and it's provided by an organization called TVW here in Washington State. It's like the C-SPAN of Washington State. And my friend Brett here is the education director for TVW and their Capital Classroom program. Thanks Josh. As Josh said, for over a decade now we've had a program we call Capital Classroom which puts working lobbyists in the classroom to teach them real-life legislative civics. Capital Classroom brings real-life citizen action into middle and high school classrooms by pairing them with working lobbyists here in Olympia. My class that I work with at TVW is Lake Washington High School, Mr. Dawson's class in high school civics and government. Our volunteer lobbyists represent their classes for the duration of legislative session as if they were one of their own clients. This is really hands-on government work by our students. It's more than just reading about what you can do and what might happen, it's actually doing it. What I love about it is that they get to choose a bill that's actually going through the legislature that they are passionate about. And after students choose a bill to advocate for or against, their lobbyist explains how the legislative process works from the inside. They help the students write letters to legislators and show the class how to work within the system to make their voices heard. My students really got this hands-on experience of, wait a second, we're just normal people but we can actually be involved in the process. Our lobbyist encouraged us to learn about both sides of an argument. It really motivated me to be a positive member in my community. It just really shows that government is a community thing and not just a separate entity off on its own doing its own thing. Recently we sat down with a handful of our veteran capital classroom teachers to learn from them how they use the program with their students and make it their own. First we'll start with Mr. Dawson who teaches AP government. My first year we were thinking, okay we're gonna meet with a lobbyist. They'll talk about some legislation that's going on in Olympia and we'll go and we'll be like, oh that sounds neat and we'll kind of follow a bill and just kind of talk about the process. And Michael Moran said in that first meeting, you guys can always come up with your own idea. I'll try to find someone who will propose that. That's when my kids really started to get like more interested in the program because then now it was just, it was their ideas. In the second year there was like, I give like two or three ideas to Michael Moran, our lobbyist. He then went out and found a legislator who would do, craft something around those ideas. In year three it morphed into then, well why don't we just have our students pitch those ideas directly to state representatives. Our bill proposal is on expanding mental health services for students. My kids would get into groups and they would come up with their own bill ideas. They would create presentations. After some research. What is the idea? Why is it an issue? What is their solution? What do they want done? What are some fiscal notes? What are some downsides that need to be, you know, all these kinds of things. So they would create about five to seven minute long presentations. I invited in a couple state senators and a state representative on three different occasions. So my kids would then present those ideas to them. They would get feedback, question and answer. Address the funding issue. One of those state representatives has been kind enough to then propose and draft one of those ideas into legislation and put it through the system. So that's where the real big arc for me has gone, is it's become basically a student-centered project. In Mrs. Paulson's eighth grade social studies class, the students analyze and explore the legislative resources at hand to develop critical thinking skills. One of the things that I love TVW for is that we get to watch like the public hearings. No military won't use it against our enemy. Or we watch the floor debates on these bills. But I responded with no. You know, I'm really having those students take notes, have conversations about them. So that Jesse Johnson, who's in support of development. What did he exactly say? Why do you think he said that? Where is that in the bill? Where can we find the evidence for that? Do you agree with that? Why or why not? What other evidence do we have to back that up? And so we absolutely are having those conversations. And it's pretty amazing to see, you know, 14 year olds who are pretty passionate about their viewpoint. It basically blocks the whole point of banning. Having the availability to go back to the text and to the videos to have those political conversations is crucial, especially for an 8th grader who's really still trying to figure out what they believe, why they believe what they do. For Mr. Lawrence's high school AP Gov class, discussions in the classroom with their lobbyists and meetings with legislators is a great way to navigate our political divisions and develop crucial skills in civil discourse. My district is an unusual one in the sense that we're very small and we're rural, but we have Bellingham kind of as it creeps out into this into the county. And so our county is just so different. I mean, Bellingham is as liberal as it gets, and the county is as conservative. I guess I'm usually coming in with kids that are very polarized. And so it's I guess I work at I usually have all these students junior year, and that's where we start, like, learning about how we have And so when I get them as seniors, I love showing TVW floor discussions. I've been to too many line-of-death funerals and would hate to think that Jason would be excluded. The referendum around same-sex marriage was a phenomenal one. I supported this bill because it will allow me to reflect the loving and committed relationships. I usually try to reshow that because the students got to see, like, here's how the discussions go. Even though they are incapable of providing a safe and stable household, can marry an infinite amount of times, while mine cannot marry one. Look at how passionate folks are. They are really passionate about their views. Particular people advocated the policies that led to today's 50% divorce rate. But they do in a civilized manner, right? They share that, and then they hear out the next person. And so we try to model that in class. It's not an argument. We're just going back and forth. No, no, no. Yeah. I think from my perspective. You have to listen, you know, for the other perspective and share that perspective before actually have them practice that. Restate the other person's perspective. I guess what I'm taking away is that your point is... Where are they at? Where are they coming from? And so we do a lot of that. But when we come down to picking the bill, you know, it's a challenge. But, you know, I also noticed that a lot of bills that pass have bipartisan support. These are really important skills, and they're doing it in the topics that we care about here in Washington State. And they really see that whether they make an impact in that particular bill, or whether they just see how to make it, that this is a real opportunity to have civic impact. Over the years, Capitol Classroom has grown into an incredibly successful program. But there are some drawbacks, particularly with the one lobbyist to one classroom ratio. All right, guys, how's it going? We only have a finite number of volunteer lobbyists here at the Capitol, making it impossible to reach all of the schools throughout the state. So Josh and I started creating a version of the program we are calling Capitol Classroom Plus. It is modeled after the Capitol Classroom program, but instead of meeting over Zoom, the sessions are divided up into three content streams, each covering essential legislative topics. Well, you may wonder, how can I be a part of this? And you certainly can participate. You can participate with Capitol Classroom Plus, especially if you're here in Washington State, it's a great opportunity. But if you're not in Washington, you may wonder, how's this relate to me? And of course, our program might be of interest to you, but it won't directly connect with the issues where you are. And so what we would suggest is that you take some of the big learnings and takeaways that we've had back into your own context. We've learned students get engaged if they're taking informed action. They need to develop real skills that have real impact, writing letters, testifying, talking to their legislators. We've learned that no matter what your program is, students get engaged by talking to real civic actors. Is it decided as a consensus? Whether that's your local lobbyists, your journalists, your legislators, those people can really make a difference when they're interacting directly with your students. We have learned that students engage best when they choose a topic they care about, or when the topic that is chosen for them is something that directly relates to their lives. These are things that inspire kids to want to take civic action. And we've learned that through this process, students develop real life skills. They develop skills in argumentation. They develop skills in sort of analysis of these documents and bills. These are basically the cheat sheets on the bill. They develop skills in how to use technology like the state bill tracker that we use and more. So lots of takeaways that you can apply in your context, and we hope you do. As Josh said, if you're wondering how to get started in your own state, first check out what your state's legislative coverage looks like. Not every state will have a gavel-to-gavel TVW style coverage. Each state should have a legislative website. We encourage you to get familiar with that site and start networking with your own legislative community. Start thinking about how you can incorporate the legislative exercises that we do with Capital Classroom into your classroom. We know as teachers, we care a lot about this problem of informed civic action. There are apparent issues, right? And there's lots of ways of getting students the education they need and the experiences they need. We hope that this little piece of the puzzle has been an inspiration for how you can do that in your classroom.