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MCCPA Uses iCivics to Connect with Community: Young Leaders and Adult Learners

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“The Youth Ambassador Program has allowed me to meet members of my community I would have never met before. By connecting over platforms (like iCivics) which encourage conversations around our civic duty, I have been exposed to new perspectives on issues relevant to my community. As a young adult living in this tumultuous time period, I feel hopeful about creating social change when I see other motivated and passionate adults and peers around me!” – Tasneem Ghadiali, 9th grade

iCivics and MCCPA Youth Ambassadors
Samantha Ruthazer, volunteer Director of Development at the Massachusetts Creating Community Power Association (MCCPA), organized a pilot Youth Ambassador leadership and civic education program where Boston-area young adults learn from community leaders and contribute to MCCPA projects and programs. Young adults in this program build their leadership skills through education and action surrounding increased civic engagement. As the vision for this program states: By accessing education and connections with local leaders, participants in the youth ambassador program will increase their understanding of how to increase their civic engagement and will partake in action that supports community growth. The Youth as Civic Experts Network from iCivics, teens from across the country, engage in virtual programming that closely models what our program aims to become; education and action that engages our leaders and creates change. 

Ruthazer connected with Amber Coleman-Mortley, Director of Social Engagement at iCivics, and arranged a meeting for the iCivics “Youth as Civic Experts” and MCCPA’s Youth Ambassadors to meet. At the heart of each program is the goal to connect, to create spaces that elevate youth voices, and to encourage active civic participation amongst young people. What was truly remarkable in the meeting of the two groups were the reflections on the action and growth they have experienced; students expressed their appreciation for a program and peers that pushed them to engage in further learning outside of their standard coursework, especially where civics curriculum has decreased or disappeared from the required academic curriculum in many states and schools. 

Using iCivics with Our Community
In an effort to bring fun and interactive methods for engaging with this work, MCCPA found that iCivics’ game-based learning approach was creative and effective. Whilst still in a pandemic, MCCPA has now hosted two virtual game nights using the iCivics platform. Youth Ambassadors facilitated groups of their peers and adult learners from across the Boston area, utilizing iCivics as an inclusive way to reach a variety of types of learners. Playing LawCraft, for example, has been a fan-favorite, and the feedback from the youth program and MCCPA community members has been exclusively positive. In small Zoom breakout rooms, players can discuss each decision as they play the game, while connecting the issues to Boston and thinking about what they would like their lawmakers to do in similar situations. 

About MCCPA
MCCPA, the Massachusetts Creating Community Power Association, was founded in June of 2020 as the United States was in a state of distress, with a global pandemic and civic unrest after the murder of George Floyd. Union Capital Boston members were interested in using the community they had cultivated to create action, and after a few months of Virtual Network Nights and meetings to heal collectively, MCCPA was born. 

MCCPA founding members Thomas Ruffen, Samantha Ruthazer, and Danielle Kalette recognized that there are hundreds of thousands of citizens not registered to vote, who do not exercise their right to vote, or are misunderstood about their civil rights and the way the American democratic system is set up. Their mission in creating this organization was to educate our community and find ways to prioritize marginalized identities, sharing power and voice, and using civic engagement as the mode of fighting racism and promoting racial justice in Boston and beyond. 

MCCPA is a developing program, and we hope to continue utilizing iCivics programming and collaborating with organizations in the Massachusetts area. We do not want to recreate the wheel, and by building on the strengths and offering of existing programs, we are truly creating our power, together. 

Written By Samantha Ruthazer

Samantha is a founding member of MCCPA. Follow MCCPA on Twitter at @MCCPA20.

We Owe Our Deepest Appreciation to Our Nation’s Civics and History Teachers

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As we approach the end of the 2020-2021 school year, we owe our nation’s civics and history teachers our deepest gratitude. This has undoubtedly been one of the most challenging school years in recent memory for all teachers, but amid cascading social and political crises, it has been particularly challenging for those who teach about our history and system of government. Civics and history teachers deserve special recognition and appreciation for a job well done through such uncertain times. 

Together, iCivics, Facing History and Ourselves, the Bill of Rights Institute, National Constitution Center, the Center for Civic Education, the Ashbrook Center, Generation Citizen, and Mikva Challenge want to send this message of gratitude to civics and history teachers across the nation.

Thank you for your perseverance this year. Thank you for prioritizing the well-being and growth of your students, for navigating complex and challenging, but meaningful conversations on current events, while still guiding your students through the core curriculum. Thank you for continuing to cultivate informed, engaged civic participants, especially when our civic and political climate was so tense. And thank you for continuing to build equitable and inclusive learning experiences for all students, especially when classroom learning was disrupted or moved fully online.

Your efforts have not gone unnoticed. We’ve been listening to you and watching with awe as you work—and we’ve been taking notes. Here is what we have learned from you this year:

  • We need to be steadfast in the support of our nation’s students and teachers, inside and outside of the classroom.
  • We need to be dedicated to lifting up and connecting with our colleagues both  within and outside of our fields.
  • We need to work to ensure that you are supported in your mission to teach about our history and our form of government, even when it’s thorny and controversial.
  • We need to continue to provide you with the resources that make your job easier and meet the needs of your evolving classrooms.  
  • We need to be relentless in our work of building a sustainable future of our constitutional democracy through the prioritization of civics and history in our nation’s classrooms. 
  • We need to continue to work with teachers and students who want to build equitable and inclusive classrooms for all students.
  • We need to continue to listen to you.

We promise you this: It did not go unnoticed that you rose above the challenges faced during an unprecedented school year. As always, your students learned so much from you, and so did we. Thank you for you for your service and dedication to your profession and to our constitutional democracy.

Signed with profound gratitude,

Making iCivics Lessons Accessible and English Learner (EL) Student-Friendly with Kami

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With many students still learning online and more classrooms integrating technology to aid instruction, the need for accessibility is greater than ever. Through our partnership with Kami, we’re prioritizing accessibility and, in particular, focusing on improving learning experiences for English and multilingual learners (ELs and MLs). Below, we’ve highlighted some key features from Kami that you can use with iCivics lesson plans to help ELs/MLs better access and engage with the class materials.

Dictionary

Do your ELs need help with challenging vocabulary terms? The dictionary function, (left side toolbar; second from the top), makes it easier for students to learn the meaning of new words. When they highlight a word in the document, the dictionary function automatically pops up a definition without taking attention away from the lesson at hand.

Text To Speech

Some students may prefer having text read aloud to them, instead of actively reading the document. With the Text-to-Speech tool, students can select text to be read to them. And there are many voice options to choose from (including some interesting accents!). When you view a document on Kami, you will find the Text To Speech feature on the left side toolbar. It’s the microphone icon (third from top).

This tool could be particularly useful to English learners who could benefit from assistance with reading or are working on their listening skills. If the reading speed is too fast, they also have the option to slow down the playback speed to ensure maximum comprehension.

Comment

The comment function, which comes in text, voice, video, or screen capture format, is a tool that can be used for a variety of purposes—particularly to communicate beyond the text and provide feedback. Some educators have found themselves using this function to customize reading assignments for their class and check for reading comprehension. But this function is also great for helping ELls interpret the text with the ability to comment in their native language. 

For students with some learning disabilities, the text, voice, and video comment options enable better communication. For example, with video commenting, instructors can interact with students beyond written text to provide more engaging face time or give feedback in sign language. 

Voice Typing (or Speech-to-Text input)

Does a student require assistance when it comes to typing or writing out their answers and notes on the document? They can utilize speech-to-text to input answers or to transcribe text directly into a text box. When adding a text comment, they can enable speech-to-text by clicking on the microphone icon (by selecting the comment icon and then clicking on the microphone icon below it). Or when typing directly onto a document, after creating a text box, the speech-to-text microphone can be found on the text formatting bar at the top of the screen.

The Drawing and Shapes Tools

For visual learners, the drawing tool and the shapes tool allow students to draw, make charts, or organize thoughts by creating a mind map or an outline. For written languages with a more complex typing system (like Chinese, Japanese, or Russian), students can jot down their thoughts in that language in the document with the drawing tool.

More from Kami

These are only some of the available features when using Kami with iCivics accounts. There are also other functions such as a dark mode that helps prevent eye strain. If you have a paid Kami account outside of iCivics, such as with your school or district, you can continue exploring these functions across other documents.

Learn more about Kami’s accessibility and ELL efforts. We also encourage educators to become a Kami Certified Educator and learn how to get the most out of Kami’s tools and improve learning outcomes for students.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Neil Gorsuch Discuss Importance of Civic Education

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In a recent conversation with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the National Security Institute (NSI), iCivics Board Member and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and fellow Justice Neil Gorsuch discussed the importance of civic education in building societal resilience. The ongoing pandemic, the spread of misinformation, and the increase in discord in American politics have caused growing concerns about the survival of the democratic republic. 

“This is the scariest of times, and the most exciting of times,” Justice Sotomayor noted during the conversation. Heated partisan debates have revealed “cracks in our system”, but this on-going discourse has also engaged people in civics who otherwise have not been involved. To fix these divisions, both Sotomayor and Gorsuch agree, an investment in civic education is a national security imperative. 

“[Civic education] is about engaging people in being active participants in change, with knowledge and with passion, without hatred. And I say that because too much of that conversation in our nation is centered on the negative and too little on the positive of what we share in common,” remarked Sotomayor. 

Since 2015, Justice Sotomayor has been on the governing board of iCivics, where she helps guide iCivics educational content and acts as an ambassador for the advancement of civic education. She noted iCivics and the CivXNow coalition as two key resources working to improve civic education across the country in the interview.

Justice Sotomayor also cited a recent study that found 18% of Americans believe army rule of the country is a good thing. In order to recognize the threats to democracy, it is critical that Americans “know about our democracy and understand its importance,” she said, adding that in order to counteract against these threats to our national security, we must call for robust civics education. Justice Gorsuch agreed with Justice Sotomayor in that he’s “less concerned in some ways about foreign enemies,” and is more concerned about the loss of community and sense of shared liberty that allow America’s enemies to sow internal disagreement.

In the U.S., the federal government funds STEM education at a rate of $50 per student each year, while civics and history education only receives 5 cents per student each year. “I don’t know if the disparity should be that large or how much closer we should come to equalizing the two,” Justice Sotomayor said, “but the disparity given reports of how little our students know about civics should be a point of concern for everyone.” 

Watch the full discussion here

New DBQuest on Cherokee Resistance and Sovereignty

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In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act authorizing the president to negotiate treaties with Native nations in order to relocate them to land west of the Mississippi and open their lands to white settlement. 

In response, the Cherokee resisted relocation, but individuals within the Cherokee Nation did so in different ways. To help students gain a broader understanding of how Native Americans responded to this removal,  iCivics has released a new DBQuest examining the response of one group, the Cherokee Nation, and how they advocated for their sovereignty. In this DBQuest, students will examine speeches made by members of the Cherokee, Elias Boudinot and Major Ridge; as well as a petition to the U.S. Congress disputing the Treaty of New Echota.

Through primary sources, this DBQuest amplifies Cherokee voices and helps students explore the complicated relationship between the Cherokee Nation and the United States, as well as relationships among the Cherokee people. 

Great for remote learning, our new DBQuest allows students to:

  • Describe how the Cherokee used a variety of means to protect their sovereignty.
  • Recognize that a group of people, such as the Cherokee Nation, is not a monolithic group and does not all think the same way.
  • Identify each type of source, its author and purpose.
  • Use evidence from informational texts to support analysis and answer questions.
  • Develop historical empathy.
Explore the DBQuest
View all DBQuest Modules

Adding My Voice to iCivics Material: Tips and Tricks for Making Online Learning Accessible and Engaging with Kami

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Last month I made a thing. Well, actually I adapted a thing…or rather, modified?… enhanced?…personalized?

I started exploring Kami in August 2020. My district’s IT department purchased an Educator License and promoted it as a useful tool for UDL and differentiation. Frankly though, I forgot about Kami in the avalanche of our school openings: once for remote-learning, and another in November for hybrid-hyflex-whatever-we-call-it.

In January 2021, I rediscovered Kami as a useful way to share news articles with students. There was a lot happening in the world, as you might remember. I wanted to spend our limited class time exploring today’s news together, but many articles are challenging for 8th graders to comprehend. Kami’s text-to-speech feature let us read / hear a paragraph together (.8x speed is the best: not too fast, not too drunk), while I shared my screen. During the read-aloud I would highlight key words, phrases, sentences. Occasionally I also added text boxes for section headings, or draw simple shapes to indicate key paragraphs. You can save a Kami and share it with a view-only link, so students who were absent could still access the article.

In March, I built on that experience to use Kami for iCivics materials.

The “Sources of Law” document contained all the basics I needed to start a unit on the legislation process, with terms like statute, lawsuit, criminal / civil law, etc. These are challenging concepts, and unfortunately the reading level (and the rather small font) appeared daunting for many of my 8th graders. Perhaps in “normal times,” I could walk around the classroom to give encouragement and help students with unfamiliar words. But let’s be real: that game of Whack-A-Mole can get exhausting real fast, as you feel pulled in a dozen different directions. At one point, I considered writing my own version of “Sources of Law” like those YA versions of popular nonfiction books.

Instead, I tried applying my experience from January…and it worked!

First I identified the most important elements for students to absorb (regulations, yes! military justice, not so much) and developed their task to show understanding. I trimmed out the activity pages (more on that later) by printing the download to a new PDF with only pages 1-4, and then uploading that into Kami.

Here’s the really cool part: I used the Audio Comment feature to actually add my voice to the iCivics document. Click near the word, phrase, or sentence you need to explain. Then just talk to your students, and hit the stop button to end recording. Done! My recordings were usually 15-30 seconds long. I also used the Markup feature to highlight some key areas. 

My comments pointed out connections to other parts of the reading, or defined unfamiliar words that weren’t explained in the document, or otherwise emphasized statements in “Sources of Law”.

PRO TIP: When you share the link, make sure you select “Viewer” not “Editor”…or else your darling students can add their own commentary, which you might not appreciate.

When students started working on this assignment (some remotely, some in the classroom), I was braced for impact. Maybe this was a mistake? Perhaps I still aimed too high? But actually I was peppered with few questions about the informational content (more queries like “Where do I find the link?”). When I did get some FAQs, I could add an additional comment / highlight on the Kami which immediately appeared for students!

Right before school on the second day, I recorded a 2-minute video comment at the top of the document. That’s where I described the assignment directions, and explained how to use the blue dots (it was not intuitive to students these are clickable objects).

I know at least 2 students used the text-to-speech feature to help them read the document; I am sure everyone listened to at least some of my comments in the margins. And I can tell you that every student who attempted this task last week completed it with proficiency (although some needed multiple attempts to adequately answer the questions).

I have not yet tried the fill-the-blanks feature of Kami, which could have been useful for the activity pages of “Sources of Law”. Frankly that was just one technology hurdle too many. Instead, I adapted one of the activities into Jamboard as a class opener on the 4th day of the unit. Soon, though, I hope all my students load the Kami extension into their Chrome browser so we can use our Schoology LMS for assigning & receiving classwork in Kami.

Any tool or strategy that improves our teaching life is always welcome, even more so during a pandemic. There are many apps and hacks that I never wish to use again (we’re looking at you, Zoom and “hybrid” teaching!), but I certainly plan to continue applying this integration of Kami features with iCivics resources. That is the kind of effective problem-solving we’re always hoping to find!

Learn How to Use iCivics & Kami

Written by Andrew Swan

Andrew is an 8th grade Social Studies teacher at Bigelow Middle School in Newton MA, where he has worked for 17 years. He has been a member of the iCivics Educator Network since 2019. He is also a co-moderator of the popular SSChat Network that hosts weekly social studies chats on Twitter with the #sschat hashtag. Follow him at @flipping_A_tchr.

No Story Goes Untold: iCivics’ New Video Series Untold Stories: Changemakers of the Civil Rights Era

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There is an African proverb that says, “As long as you speak my name I shall live forever.” As a former U.S. History teacher, I purposefully spent a lot of time speaking the names of people who didn’t usually make it into the history books. I wanted my students to see diverse historical figures, but also see that regular, everyday people could make a difference. And I was pretty proud of my knowledge of lesser known figures…until I headed up iCivics’ Untold Stories project.

Our Untold Stories series consists of five short (2 minutes or less) animated videos designed to shed light on hidden heroes in the Civil Rights Movement. My task was to research their stories, write the script summaries, and work with the crew at Makematic, our video production company who pioneered the Untold project, to oversee the final products. Easy, I thought. But when I sat down to research, I was both humbled and pleasantly surprised.

With the exception of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, I had never heard of the people I was researching. “How could this be?” I thought. I taught this material for 16 years! Dismayed, I pulled out my heavily annotated, dog-eared copy of Eyes on the Prize by Juan Williams. Surely, lawyer and federal judge Constance Baker Motley must be in here. She was, but only twice and only as part of a list of lawyers involved in NAACP cases. Hmm. The other names weren’t listed in my sundry resources either. So, I was off to the Internet.

There were online sources, but there were multiple discrepancies in the details. These Untold Stories really were untold. In my search for accuracy (or the best that I could get) I started digging deeper. I was soon horrified that I had taught civil rights for so long without knowing any of these people. How could I not know of Barbara Johns, a 16-year-old who led a student protest that ended up as a legal case and part of Brown v. Board of Education? My students would have loved that story! And J.D. and Ethel Shelley? Theirs is the stuff of Hollywood movies—risking everything to make a secret arrangement for a white woman to buy their house so they could circumvent a restrictive covenant. 

And then there’s the story of Autherine Lucy and Pollie Ann Myers. When I started researching it, most of the information was about Autherine. She was the first African American to actually attend classes at the University of Alabama. In the resources, Pollie Ann was mentioned nominally as the friend who applied with her, but was later dismissed by the university. I couldn’t even find visuals of Pollie Ann for the animators to use. Since scripts have to be short, Pollie Ann got limited mention there too. But when my supervisor reviewed the script, she made a note about Pollie Ann. She wrote, “Thank you for not writing her out of history.” And there it was. I almost did the exact same thing the history books had. It saddened me to realize how easy it would have been to erase her from history. With help from our Makematic producer, I was even able to contact the Myers family for more information about Pollie Ann and include it in the video’s Teacher’s Guide. As it turns out, it was actually Pollie Ann’s idea to challenge the University of Alabama’s segregation policy. 

What I love about these videos is that they present the stories of ordinary people to whom students can relate. And because of that, the videos provide an opportunity for deep and meaningful class discussions about oppression, racism, and change. They can be used to demonstrate how protest and civic action are carefully planned, strategic events—not random, accidental moments. They can show that advocating for change involves risk, sacrifice, and sometimes, violence. And, in the case of Autherine and Pollie Ann, they can explore how laws or courtroom victories don’t necessarily bring the social change they promise. Lastly, the topics covered in all of the videos can be easily tied to current events. 

The videos and their accompanying Teacher’s Guides were a pure revelation to make. I hope they generate a renewed interest in the lesser known people behind the Civil Rights Movement. I hope they inspire passionate discussions about government, laws, and the power of people to create change in a democracy. But most of all, I hope they allow the names of these changemakers to be spoken, so that their spirits can live on forever.

Explore the Videos & Guides

Written by Lora De Salvo

Lora De Salvo is a Curriculum Associate at iCivics. She has 16 years of experience teaching U.S. history and U.S. government courses at the two-year college and high school levels. She has also worked as a training specialist with the Anti-Defamation League facilitating anti-bias and anti-bullying programs with middle and high school students.

Classroom Resources for National County Government Month

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Updated April 3, 2023

Young people care about their communities and want to play a part in helping them thrive. That’s what makes National County Government Month, held each April by the National Association of Counties, such a great time to talk with your kids about the role local government plays in keeping your community safe, healthy, and growing.

We have many resources to help you start conversations and learn together. With these lesson plans and learning resources, students will gain knowledge about how their county government is organized, what it does, who’s in charge, and how they can get involved.

County Government Lesson Plan (for High School)

This lesson covers the diversity in county government structure, duties and services as well as the budgeting process. Students will investigate the impact of unfunded mandates and work to balance a county budget.

County Basics WebQuest

There’s no better way to learn about county governments than starting with your own. In this WebQuest, students will explore the web to learn more about their own county and what it does.

Counties Work Game

Make room for fun this National County Government Month with Counties Work! With this game, students will learn about local government by playing a county official responding to citizen requests.

Counties Work: Texas

Teaching in Texas? Assign this state adaptation of Counties Work to teach students all about Texas county government.

County Contributions Infographic

Are your students visual learners? This infographic is perfect for teaching about the different departments within the county government and what they do to keep the county running.

County Solutions Plan Unit

The county level is also a great place for students to advocate for issues they care about. In this multi-lesson unit, students will select a community issue they’d like to know more about and address. Then, they’ll examine the context of their issues — including the role of county and other levels of government — and develop strategies to bring about local change.

Interested in who supports National County Government Month? Check out the National Association of Counties to learn more about National County Government Month and activities for students.

iCivics in Dual Language Teaching: How to Utilize iCivics Resources to Engage English and Multilingual Learners

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Five years ago, I was presented with the opportunity to begin a Dual Language Social Studies program at my middle school. I was honored and excited by the challenge, but I quickly became discouraged at the lack of materials in Spanish. I was able to find materials and textbooks from other Spanish-speaking countries to assist me in the classroom, since World History is taught in most countries. It was not until I began teaching Civics and U.S. History that I realized there was a severe lack of resources in Spanish for a Dual Language classroom. 

While I searched for Spanish material specific to U.S. Government and History, I found iCivics had a plethora of materials for me to use! I began by using the interactive games iCivics created and translating some of the activities and articles I found  for the days I needed to teach in Spanish. Thanks to the iCivics English Learner (EL) supports, I was able to use their games and articles on my English days as well!

In a Dual Language classroom, the teacher is not only a content expert, but a language teacher. Half of my students had only been in the U.S. for a little over a year, and the other half merely months! I not only had to teach academic English, but civics to a large portion of students who had only experienced a dictatorship vs. democracy.

Then, in October of 2019, I was asked to teach civics to roughly 20 monolingual Spanish-speaking students who had just arrived in the U.S. Now, I do not have to tell you that test scores matter. Anyone in education knows this. So, when I received these students, I was about a month and a half into my curriculum and two and a half months from the semester exam. The iCivics lessons and my translations saved the day! When teaching a new language, the focus should be on five core domains: speaking, listening, reading, writing and culture. What was so amazing was how the iCivics lessons covered every domain as well as the three modes of communication (interpersonal, presentational, intrapersonal) in their activities!

Whether it was learning about Hobbes and Locke in Why Government? or participating in student activities like the foldables in Colonial Influences, my students began to develop a clear and purposeful understanding of how the government of the U.S. came to be. I also greatly appreciated how culturally relevant and sensitive the lessons were.

When learning about the different types of governments using Who Rules?, my students were fascinated to learn there were other countries with governments similar to the ones they left. The iCivics games were also helpful. After studying about the path to citizenship, I assigned the iCivics game, “¿Tengo Algún Derecho?” (Do I Have a Right?). Because the game was in Spanish, my students were able to play individually and with their parents; and I personally loved that my students and their parents began to develop a deep appreciation for the country that embraced them!     

Explore iCivics’ EL Resources

When the pandemic hit, everything changed. I had to find a new way to have my students interact with the text on their own. This is so difficult for an English Learner and their families. It is no secret that most students learn best from working together, but for an EL, this is crucial.

Thankfully, Kami and iCivics formed a partnership which allows student documents to be interactive and fun! One of their favorite lessons was the Civil Rights court cases before and after Jim Crow. It allowed them to see the “why” and “how” our laws are made. Though the iCivics lesson, Jim Crow, covers a lot of general information, my students loved learning about the individual court cases like Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education. They could relate to the cases and the opinion of the court based on their own lives. The game “Guerra de Argumentos” (Argument Wars) allowed me to extend that knowledge of citizens’ civil rights and the Bill of Rights by having them interact with the information when we could not have discussions. 

The fact that some of the iCivics games are in Spanish allowed me to reinforce the content in their native language and provided students with the opportunity to work with their parents in learning about our laws and government. Parent involvement in our country’s laws and government is so important to developing good citizens. The most important thing iCivics helped me do was to help prepare my students to be responsible and active future citizens of the U.S.

 

Written By Verónica Schmidt-Gómez, MEd

Veronica teaches Dual Language World History, Dual Language Civics, and Dual Language U.S. History at Pierce Middle School in Tampa, FL. She has been a member of the iCivics Educator Network since 2020. Follow her on Twitter at: @SraGomezDual.

Civics for All: Empowering English and Multilingual Learners

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“For me, civic education is the key to inspiring kids to want to stay involved in making a difference,” says Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court, Board Member of iCivics, a nonprofit focused on civics education. 

Civics has been getting a lot of attention lately, with many adults scrambling to recall and apply basic concepts as history is made around us. Even with a rise in this civic awareness, many social studies teachers report discomfort with teaching civics in the current political climate.

Social studies teachers can create classrooms that are safe spaces for students to talk about current events and have discussions about issues that many deem controversial. Civic education prepares students with the skills and attitudes that are necessary in a democracy including a sense of civic responsibility, critical thinking, and agency. iCivics is committed to providing high-quality and effective civic learning materials that are accessible—and engaging—for all students, including English language learners. Confianza, a professional learning organization that collaborates with iCivics, is focused on ensuring equity for language learners.

English language learners, also known as ELLs, ELs, emergent bilinguals, multilingual learners, and MLs, represent a growing segment of the U.S. public school population where almost 1 in 10 students nationwide is identified as an English learner. While ELs all have learning English and content simultaneously in common, this group is extremely diverse, speaking more than 400 languages across all kinds of school districts—urban, suburban, exurban and rural—with Spanish being the most common language. Most English learners are students of color who may be facing systemic racism within and beyond the classroom door. How can we deliver civics instruction to this student population in a way that can make an impact? How can we help empower them with the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in America?

Proficiency in English is linked to academic success and is a key role in preparing them to be knowledgeable and engaged. ELs/MLs score very low in civic knowledge: they fared the worst of any population measured, with only 1% demonstrating proficiency. In fact, four out of five ELs do not even have “basic” understanding in civics. (NAEP, 2014) Therefore, English learners, and all students, need access to high-quality civic education.

“We are not going to be able to prepare citizens of the world if they can’t debate or think critically. And the debate needs to be open and civil.” Dr. Socorro Herrera, professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education at Kansas State University and Executive Director of the Center for Intercultural and Multilingual Advocacy (CIMA). 

Teachers need materials to help foster civic engagement and skills in an engaging, culturally-relevant way that is tailored to the needs of all students—especially ELs/MLs. Game-based learning is a great way to fill this need. Experiential learning is a fun and engaging way for students to learn. With iCivics games, students have agency; they get to “be” a Supreme Court Justice, the president, a constitutional lawyer, and more. They learn about civic institutions and government while playing. They can also make mistakes and try again. All of this helps build the confidence and critical-thinking skills they need to then engage in class discussions.   

“If we do this right, we are opening spaces for our ELs/MLs not only to have access to learn the language, but also the critical space to analyze the ins and outs of how America works. As an immigrant coming in, in my own formation, that was exactly how it did.” says Dr. Katherine Barko-Alva, Assistant Professor and Director of the ESL/Bilingual Education program at William & Mary School of Education. She added: “To come here and have a class where they can explore differences and ramifications of those actions. How powerful is that? That’s why I love culturally, linguistically diverse biography-driven instruction.”

According to Larry Ferlazzo, author, blogger, and English and Social Studies teacher at Luther Burbank High School in CA, “I think it’s critical that civics education be an important part of classes we teach for English Language Learners (and, of course, for ALL students). Political participation has not always been a safe or effective option in their home countries.  Schools in the U.S. have traditionally viewed one of their responsibilities as developing responsible citizens, so we need to help equip our English Language Learners with the knowledge and tools to become “active citizens”—to know not only how our political process works, but to know how to use their power to make that process, and our communities, better.  Being able to pass a civics or citizenship test is one thing, but I think we teachers need to also equip our students with the skills to be able to apply that knowledge to create social change.”

So, where can educators go to find tips and strategies for teaching civics to English learners? Kristen Chapron from iCivics and Sarah Ottow from Confianza have pulled together some free resources to help you get started:

About Confianza:

Confianza is a professional learning organization that builds cultural understanding, communication, and collaboration between educators and multilingual learners. Our framework is based on fostering equity-based mindsets and language and literacy practices. Through tailored coaching, practical guidance, and world-class content, we positively change the lives of teachers and students. Check out our free blog at: www.ellconfianza.com.