You may know C-SPAN as that boring channel that airs footage of Congress, or you may know C-SPAN as a great organization that offers tons of free resources and opportunities for teachers. If you’re one of the former, you should check out C-SPAN Classroom Deliberations, C-SPAN’s StudentCam Competition or C-SPAN Classroom. If you check back, […]
In an age of college and career readiness, Nebraska is making a move to prioritize “civic readiness.” I mentioned in previous weekly news recaps here and here that the Nebraska State Board of Education was debating a definition of civic readiness. This followed on its decision to include it as a prominent feature in its strategic […]
One way to place an emphasis on civics education is to mandate it. For example, you can modify a state’s high school graduation requirements to include a civics course. But if you don’t want to increase the number of requirements, an alternative solution is to incentivize it. California is headed down this road with a […]
Last week, I came across a letter to the editor in a New Hampshire paper arguing in favor of lowering the voting age to sixteen. I find it intriguing how divisive this topic is. When I posed the question to a group of educators, it sparked a pretty heated debate. Some argued that students are […]
Good civics education gives students an opportunity to apply what they learn and practice being engaged citizens. This often involves some form of project based learning. Solutions Civics is another option that you can use to help structure and facilitate this process. It’s a series of lessons and resources developed by the Citizens Campaign. The […]
I saw an article the other day that really piqued my interest: How Hawaii Schools are Rethinking Social Studies. One of the great things about working at C-SPAN was meeting social studies teachers from around the country. It turns there are a lot of different ways to organize the social studies curriculum. Otherwise, it’s easy […]
Throughout the country, legislators are struggling to figure out how to improve civics education. Many people agree on the goal. They just don’t agree on the methods. In some cases, legislators have pursued misguided attempts to implement the citizenship test as a graduation requirement. This won’t do much, other than adding another barrier to graduation […]
Does social studies include more than just history? If you look at New Jersey’s model curriculum for social studies, you might not think so. New Jersey’s social studies standards already place a great deal of emphasis on history. There is so much content that civics and government gets pushed to the sidelines. In case you […]
In theory, social studies is supposed to incorporate a lot of things – history, geography, civics, economics. These themes should all be infused throughout a social studies course. But the way New Jersey’s Student Learning Standards are set up, one type of content reigns supreme: history. New Jersey’s standards put so much emphasis on history […]
StudentCam is an annual competition hosted by C-SPAN for middle and high school students. C-SPAN sets a theme for each year’s contest, and students create a 5-7 minute video related to that theme. In the process, students must navigate the C-SPAN video archive and demonstrate a deep understanding of concepts in civics and government. This […]