I recently broke up with Culver’s. Let me explain. In my classroom, civic literacy isn’t about memorizing documents. It’s about learning how those ideas live, travel, and show up in students’ real lives. As part of the Civic Star Challenge, we took a close look at the Declaration of Independence.

I began my career as a social studies teacher in September 2001. By my second week in the classroom, the attacks of September 11th had reshaped not only the nation, but also my understanding of what it meant to teach history. I became acutely aware of the students in my

Last September, I set a goal for myself: to find a game for every standard I teach. In other words, to gamify the entire school year. While 6th graders can’t vote—and they often feel that participating in civic life is something only their parents can do—games put them in the