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MicrosoftHi everyone!
I work for a county elections office that oversees polling places, poll workers and voter registration. I'm curious for any feedback about engaging with students (be they elementary, middle or high school students) about civic participation and registering to vote. I know from experience that some teachers have trepidation about registering students to vote in classrooms, but I was curious if anyone could provide any information about how to engage students about the importance of civics itself. Admittedly, our office does go to schools to register students to vote, but I think it's more important to speak about civic participation and why young adults should be more concerned about voting. From personal experience, my civics education was learning about the Founding Fathers and didn't quite connect how government interacts with regular people.
Does anyone have any good tips for what to say or know of any apolitical groups who do advocacy work like this? My intention is not to preach to students that voting is a responsibility when reaching adulthood and that they need to do this. I'd rather try to connect with students so they understand why civic participation/voting is important and how it impacts every aspect of day-to-day life.
Thank you for reading and your time! Please comment any questions or feedback you think would be relevant.
Hi Alyssa--You've come to the right place for engaging students to be civically active. I'll just give you a brief comment or two now and perhaps some more later.
The Center offers free materials on its website, including "Citizens, Not Spectators," a series of lessons about the voting process that gives students practice in casting votes. The address is http://www.civiced.org/programs/citizens.
The Center's curricula that show why we have government and how the government and citizens interact include We the People (upper elementary, middle, and high school), Project Citizen (upper elementary through high school), and Foundations of Democracy(K-12). As a non-partisan nonprofit organization the Center seeks to reach people across the breadth of the political spectrum. Descriptions of all of these curricula are available at http://www.civiced.org and any member of the Center staff would be delighted to expound on all of our programs.