This year, Community High School Civics students are getting a new kind of lesson. They have all been assigned an interactive project on the 2010 Michigan gubernatorial race, involving research on a specific candidate’s campaign, as well as a chance to participate in a nationwide mock election for high school students. Civics teacher Cheryl Grace described it as a project whose purpose “is to engage students in the issues relating to the 2010 midterm elections.”
In each civics class, students were put into groups and randomly assigned a candidate running for Michigan governor. Each person was then required to research their candidate’s views on major issues in Michigan politics before collaborating with their group to make a poster and skit expressing their key points. “This project forced students to really look at a variety of sources and form their own opinions about the candidate without mindlessly going with one party or another,” said Jason McKnight, CHS civics teacher.
To end the project, all civic classes met at a mock rally to perform their skits. They then hung the posters on the second floor of CHS with the hope that students not in a civics class would make use of them to learn more about this year’s midterm elections.
“The University of Virginia Institute for Public Politics Project [is] running, as they always do, a nationwide student mock election online. Our students at Community will have the opportunity to vote in that, so part of the project is to make posters to educate students about the governor’s race issues,” said Grace.
“We’re making posters around Community, so hopefully [people] will actually look at them,” agreed civics student Abby Lauer.
This will be the first time the civics classes are doing this project. “[Jason and I] both went to a conference together at the end of September about the Michigan elections in particular, and so we started talking about it then,” said Grace. “[We] hoped this would be a really interesting and engaging way to get our students interested in the election.”
Students seem to be enjoying the assignment. “I really like it. I’m learning so much about all the different candidates and parties,” said Lauer.
Civics student Fernando Rojo agreed, “It’s a really fun way to get involved with the election. I’m learning things I never knew before.”
Grace added, “I think [students] are pretty excited about it. They seem to be following independently, and some of them are even taking the opportunity to go and do more research without me even asking them to do that.”
As election day approaches, all Community students will get a chance to vote in the mock election. “I’m really curious to see how our votes compare with the actual winner,” said Lauer. “It’s really interesting, so everybody should vote.”
McKnight concluded, “When the time comes for them to be in the voting booth, it’s important for [students] to make informed decisions for themselves based on multiple sources.”
Photos by Jordan Siden
