Luess joined iCivics in January 2023 as the Chief Product Officer. In this role, Luess leads the product strategy and editorial development for the iCivics portfolio.
Prior to iCivics, Luess held many positions in the K-12 educational publishing industry focused on developing history, civics, and government curricula. Most recently, as the VP, Humanities Product Development at Savvas Learning Company (formerly Pearson K12 Learning), Luess oversaw the K-12 Social Studies and World Languages product lines. There she was instrumental in the development of several market-leading programs, including Magruder’s American Government. She started her career in educational publishing in the Educational Technology group at Houghton Mifflin. Her first experience in the publishing world was as a children’s trade editor on the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series.
Luess holds a M.A. in History from University of Massachusetts and a B.A. in History from Duke University. She excels at navigating complex issues and developing creative product solutions that help students learn and practice knowledge and skills they need to engage in the civic process. She is an avid gardener and downhill skier who loves reading mysteries and doing jigsaw puzzles.
Dr. Emma Humphries joined iCivics as Chief Education Officer in February 2016.
Emma began her career in education as a classroom teacher in North Florida, where she taught all levels of American government, American history, and economics. It was there she first learned the power of innovative learning tools that allow students to engage with important content and make meaning of otherwise dry concepts such as federalism and limited government.
In 2008, she began a Ph.D. program in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Florida, where she focused her studies and research on civic education and teacher professional development until she graduated in 2012. As luck would have it, Justice O’Connor visited the Florida legislature during this time, inspiring them to pass the Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Civics Education Act in 2010, which mandated civics instruction at the middle school level. This timely development provided Emma with opportunities to partner with the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship in drafting a yearlong 7th-grade civics curriculum and assisting in subsequent teacher training efforts.
In 2011, Emma joined the team at the Bob Graham Center for Public Service as its Civic Engagement Coordinator. In this role, she worked with center and campus leadership to promote civic engagement at the University of Florida by developing, implementing, and coordinating innovative programs for students. During her tenure, she also created and taught an award-winning, online citizenship course entitled “Rethinking Citizenship: Identity, Collaboration, and Action.”
Emma has degrees in political science and education and was awarded a James Madison Fellowship in 2004. She was a founding member of the iCivics Educator Network and has been spreading the good word about iCivics since 2010.
Emma lives on Saint Simons Island, GA, with her husband, Michael, and their daughters, June and Julia. In her spare time, she chairs the annual St. Simons Island Wine Festival benefitting local arts and education causes.
As I enter my second decade with iCivics, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what a ride it’s been!
During my interview dinner with iCivics Founder Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in May of 2014, I remember not speaking more than three words between people coming up to her and mostly listening to her bold vision.
I was conflicted about accepting the position. Friends were dubious about taking a position with a small (6 staff) and financially unstable nonprofit that was reliant on a high-visibility champion. As one iCivics board member stated, “when you work at a more mature organization, you get paid whether you raise money or not. Here, if you do not raise the funding, you don’t get paid.” That was sobering.
I weighed those concerns against what I saw: an incredible product with a dedicated fan base on an issue I cared deeply about preparing young people for civic engagement.
The founding team had done the hard work. Abby Taylor, Jeff Curley, Carrie Ray Hill, Allison Atwater, Julie O’Sullivan, and so many others designed products with unusual attention to, and care for, educator needs. They understood what teachers needed: meeting state standards while crunched for time and striving to hold student attention. Justice O’Connor truly listened to educators and allowed her team to design what was needed. They were meticulous and connected with users frequently. In my 20+ years in education, I had rarely seen that.
What’s more, I remembered my son using Win the White House while in 4th grade. At the time, I was skeptical about games as homework, but he told me, “All of school should be like iCivics.” That won the day.
The first couple of years were stressful. In the first few weeks, we got a transformative gift from the MacArthur Foundation, which gave us the runway to grow. From there, we built on the assets the founding team had developed and sought to make Justice O’Connor’s vision a reality.
By 2017, it was clear that if we wanted civic education to have an impact, we would need a nationwide movement to make civic education a priority. That year, the Carnegie Corporation of New York invested in and supported our development of the “Democracy at a Crossroads” conference, expanding the visibility of civic education and incubating the CivxNow coalition.
But at a time of great division, such a movement needs a north star. What kind of civic education does our country need? Along with 300 colleagues, we sought to answer that question, culminating in Educating for American Democracy in 2021.
This vision of a thriving American democracy supported by informed and civically engaged young people animates us today. Our resources are now used in every state in the nation to serve 9 million students every year. We have hundreds of resources to support educators and added services to our product mix. This expanded reach and support for students and educators is made possible today by a staff of 70 across 25 states, and a budget that has grown tenfold.
Most of all, we have had an impact. We have helped more than quadruple federal funding for civic education. Our coalition—now 340-strong—has helped pass policies to advance civic education in 24 states. We know that states where strong quality civic education has been implemented have better results on assessments of civic learning.
I am deeply grateful to iCivics and to the team who has done an enormous amount of hard work over the years. I am also grateful to our extraordinary supporters, who have shared their insights as well as their financial resources to make this work possible.
iCivics is growing up! Here’s to the next 10 years…
“My aunt always said that knowing more than one language was a superpower.” Shareen Marisol Meraji, keynote speaker kicked off the WIDA 2023 Conference by talking about the importance of “Giving children a strong foundation in their heritage language so that children could be proud of where they come from.”
Being multilingual is a superpower indeed. Knowing another language boosts your memory, gives you a greater ability to multitask, and improves social skills since you draw experiences from different cultures and look at issues from multiple perspectives. One of the important aspects of teaching multilingual learners is to focus on the assets they bring into the classroom.
I attended this year’s WIDA conference because, as part of our mission, iCivics aims to empower and equip ELs and MLs by making our games and resources accessible to all. We are continuously working to improve our ELL materials. In the field of civics and social studies, it’s particularly important to make sure that students see themselves reflected in the stories we tell and we want to make sure that the content has the support and scaffolding that ELs and MLs need in order to be successful. I was able to connect with several leaders in the field and get their thoughts.
One of these leaders was Dr. Luciana de Oliviera, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Graduate Studies and Professor of the Department of Teaching and Learning at Virginia Commonwealth University. She said, “The WIDA 2023 conference was my first and I absolutely loved everything!! The fact that this conference is for K-12 teachers by teachers was prevalent throughout the program. What I loved the most was to see the value and interest in a functional approach to language development. For those of us doing research and practicing this for over 20 years, it is incredible to notice the changes in the field impacted by the inclusion of this approach in WIDA 2020.!”
Many of the sessions focused on the WIDA English Language Development (ELD) Standards Framework which is centered on equity and fosters the assets, contributions, and potential of multilingual learners. It focuses on a functional approach to language development and one of the big ideas is the integration of content and language. WIDA’s Key Language Uses—narrate, argue, inform, and explain—are core to communicating ideas and content in social studies and civics.
Another leader (former WIDA researcher and one of the authors of the WIDA ELD Standards), I spoke to was Dr. Ruslana Westerlund, an educational consultant at the Cooperative Educational Service Agency 2 serving Wisconsin school districts and Associate Adjunct Faculty in the Graduate School of Education at Bethel University. She was one of the authors of the WIDA ELD Standards who worked hard to represent disciplinary genres such as explanations and arguments through the Key Language Uses. To illustrate the synergy between C3 and WIDA, she wrote Scaffolding ML Access to Social Studies Inquiry Through the WIDA ELD Standards. When asked about this year’s conference, she said, “This year’s WIDA Conference exemplified the strength of what happens when we do transdisciplinary work. We are seeing math (such as Dr. Karen Terrel) and science (like Dr. David Crowther) and social studies (like iCivics)… CONTENT people come to language conferences! Now we, language people have work to do and go to science and math and social studies conferences. We have so much to learn from each other. We are stronger together. Our students will only benefit when adults start working together, walk across the hallway and humbly ask for help.”
Our students are learning content and language at the same time. We are integrating content and language instruction in our materials in many different ways through instructional strategies, language objectives, scaffolding, vocabulary integration, visuals, video viewing, and more. This is the very approach iCivics is using to develop its core curriculum for U.S. History, which will be published in summer of 2024. ELs/MLs can soar higher when their skills and superpowers are supported by high-quality instructional materials and celebrated.
Kristen Chapron is Senior Editor of Digital Learning and ELL at iCivics. She has worked on all of the EL and bilingual resources and looks forward to creating even more materials for English and multilingual learners.
Sue joined iCivics as Chief Operating and Financial Officer in 2015.
Sue specializes in helping entrepreneurial, early-stage organizations successfully grow. She has more than 20 years of experience building strategically focused, high-performing, team-oriented cultures equipped to expand quickly. Across Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Operations, and Programming, Sue builds scalable infrastructures that enable operational excellence and she helps teams reach their full potential in achieving organizational goals.
Prior to joining iCivics, Sue was the COO for Year Up, a social enterprise organization with a mission to close the opportunity divide by providing urban young adults skills, support, and access to opportunity. Sue led the operations of Year Up from a single site, early-stage organization to an award-winning national organization in 13 cities, with over 500 employees and a budget of over $70 million.
Earlier in her career, Sue was the COO at the Share Group. As a founding manager, she played an integral role in growing this start-up into a $20 million industry leader in fundraising for national progressive nonprofits. Sue has additional experience in political campaigns and in academia.
Sue’s passion for civic engagement started in grammar school, voting in mock presidential elections and working with her Dad on numerous political campaigns. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Government from Colby College and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She has spent her career in the social sector building organizations that increase engagement in improving our democracy.
Louise joined iCivics as its Chief Executive Officer in July 2014.
Louise discovered the power of education in the early 1990s as a co-founder of CASES, a New York alternative-to-incarceration program for youthful offenders where education helped reshape lives. Inspired by a deep commitment to creating pathways to lives of learning and purpose, she has devoted her career to ensuring that all students are prepared for civic life.
Louise has successfully led K-12 growth organizations that use educational media to improve student achievement across the private and nonprofit sectors. Most recently, as Managing Director of Digital Learning at WGBH, Louise helped launch PBS LearningMedia, a platform with more than 87,000 classroom-ready digital resources reaching 1.5 million educators.
Louise has received national recognition for her work. She received a Civvys award from Bridge Alliance, the People’s Voice Award from the Diane Von Furstenberg/Barry Diller Foundation, and was selected as a Donaldson Fellow in 2019 at Yale SOM. She is also a Draper, Richards, Kaplan Fellow. As a civic education expert, Louise has published and been interviewed widely in national and education press.
Louise began her career as an attorney in Montreal, Canada. She holds a law degree from McGill University and an MBA from Yale’s School of Management.
Louise, a native of Quebec, has two children who share her love of travel, reading, debating, and learning.
Interested in interviewing Louise or having her as a speaker? Contact [email protected]
¡Hola, historiadores! Private i History Detectives, our supplemental mystery-themed curriculum, is now available in Spanish for select mysteries. These lessons teach strategies such as notice, wonder, inference, and comparison.
Private i History Detectives can be used in a wide variety of classroom settings, including multilingual and bilingual classrooms. Two mysteries at each grade level, including the Introduction to Inquiry mysteries, are available in Spanish, allowing Spanish-speaking students to practice exploring primary sources, analyzing information, and asking questions.
Each mystery lesson includes English and Spanish student and class materials such as transcripts, handouts, Google Slide decks with audible Spanish narrations, and lesson plans. These resources will help students build social studies content knowledge, foster critical thinking skills, and develop disciplinary language.
Explore these Private i History Detective Spanish Lessons:
Historians are observant. In this introduction to inquiry lesson, students will learn some of the skills and strategies historians use to learn about the past. Students will use their historian skills to uncover a mystery object as they notice, wonder, infer, and compare.
Historians can learn a lot from a hat! In this lesson, students will look at images of historical and modern hats to learn how hats can give us clues about what people do for work and why their hats may need special features.
Historians draw conclusions. In this lesson, students are introduced to the concepts of citizenship and leadership. They are asked to consider the different groups they belong to and how members of each group help one another.
Historians make inferences. In this lesson, students explore primary source images and learn some of the skills and strategies historians use to learn about the past.
Historians observe. In this lesson, students learn some of the skills and strategies historians use to learn about the past. Students will look at an image of a classroom from the past and try to figure out what the class is learning about.
Historians make inferences. In this lesson, students learn some of the skills and strategies historians use to learn about the past. They will analyze information and provide reasoning.
Historians study the past. In this lesson, students learn some of the skills and strategies historians use to learn about the past. Students will gather evidence from primary sources, such as a law created in Virginia in 1617 that required everyone to grow corn.
Last Friday, I was fortunate to participate in one of my first iCivics events—a Civics Showcase celebrating the incredible work of Colorado students and educators piloting iCivics’ U.S. History curriculum.
This inquiry-based curriculum was built in collaboration with expert educators, historians, and practitioners from across the nation. It is aligned with state standards, and districts and teachers can customize it to the needs of any state, community, and classroom.
Through the curriculum, students engage with curated primary and secondary sources such as historical documents, speeches, letters, journal entries, photographs, maps, and videos to dig deep and explore this country’s early history. Students are asked to engage in classroom projects that allow them to investigate and answer important questions about our country in the years preceding its founding through Reconstruction.
Colorado has been a trailblazer in this endeavor. Jeffco Public Schools in Jefferson County, Colorado, was one of the first districts to pilot the U.S. History curriculum last year (along with Santa Fe, NM, and Oklahoma City, OK). Building on the success in Jefferson County, another Colorado school district, Cherry Creek Public Schools, implemented the curriculum this year.
The impact of this project-embedded approach to U.S. History was on full display at the recent showcase. Nearly 100 students, family members, educators, schools leaders, and community members came to the History Colorado Center in Denver to view 22 unique student projects. Against the background of the artifacts, stories, and art that illustrate the history of Colorado and the American West, students presented a range of inspiring projects exploring key moments and questions from early U.S. History, and how they shaped institutions and civic life in the United States today. Their thoughtful, researched reflections touched on everything from the impact of early European settlers to Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny, from slavery and the Civil War to the Industrial Revolution and evolving rights, responsibilities, and expectations of Americans.
And it wasn’t just students who felt the impact of this modern approach to teaching history and civics. Participating teachers—even 20-year veteran teachers—shared how this curriculum shifted their practice to become more student-centered. I was particularly moved by the exuberance of so many parents who were amazed how different this was from their own history and civic education. Many wondered aloud if they would have loved history if they had learned it this way, and were grateful their children were able to benefit from such a meaningful educational experience.
This incredible event was part of a series of proactive family and community engagements to ensure transparency and promote connection beyond the classroom. This was made possible with additional support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Howard and Geraldine Polinger Family Foundation. These learnings and examples will also feature in an implementation toolkit to emphasize the importance of family engagement for widespread district adoption.
I can’t tell you what it meant to me and my colleagues who worked to make this vision possible to see the real and lasting impact this in-depth learning has on students, educators, and entire communities. We want to reiterate our thanks to all the funders who have made this work possible. Perhaps most importantly, we welcome other districts to adopt this highly engaging and effective curriculum as well. Please feel free to email me for more information.
Written by Mya Baker
Mya joined iCivics in 2024 as the Chief Learning Services Officer. Prior to iCivics, she led TNTP’s consulting work across 14 states, with a focus on helping educators, schools, and school systems expand access to opportunity. Mya also served as the Senior Director of Curriculum and Instruction at Uplift Education in Dallas-Fort Worth. She is a graduate of the University of Texas-Austin (BS in Communications/BA in Government) and earned her Masters in Teaching & Learning from American University.
WASHINGTON, DC — April 29, 2024 — iCivics, the nation’s leading civic education nonprofit, and the White House Historical Association today launched Brief the Chief, a new digital game that teaches students how the President of the United States makes difficult governing decisions, providing insight into how presidents rely on an array of advisors to make tough judgment calls.
Brief the Chief also gives students an inside look into the historic White House offices of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Lyndon B. Johnson as they navigated some of the most pivotal moments of their presidencies.
The game positions students as trusted advisors to the president, challenging them to consult with a variety of sources and confidants within the White House and use evidence-based reasoning to give counsel on a number of different situations. Students advise Jefferson as he determines whether he should continue trade with independent Haiti in 1804 amid tensions with France; Lincoln as he contemplates the Emancipation Proclamation; and Johnson as he decides if he should run for another term as president.
Along the way, students have conversations with likely sources such as secretaries of state, military advisors, and foreign diplomats. They also speak with historical figures such as civil rights leader Amelia Boynton, First Lady Mary Lincoln’s dressmaker Elizabeth Keckly, the Johnsons’ personal cook Zephyr Wright, and Haitian leader Jean Jacques Dessalines. In this way, the game gives students the opportunity to learn from those with unique perspectives and from underrepresented communities throughout history. Students practice listening and contextualizing facts and opinions.
Brief the Chief continues a growing partnership between iCivics and the Association. In 2023, iCivics and the Association released a Spanish-language version of Executive Command, one of iCivics’ most popular games that teaches students how the Executive Branch functions.
“We’re incredibly proud and honored to partner with the White House Historical Association,” iCivics Chief Executive Officer Lousie Dubé said. “Brief the Chief teaches young people a skill that is increasingly more important: how to engage with people from different perspectives, gather important insights, and make evidence-based decisions.”
Brief the Chief leverages the strengths of both iCivics and the Association. Up to 145,000 teachers rely on iCivics resources each year to help some 9 million students learn foundational civic knowledge and the skills needed to become engaged citizens. A team of three Association educators and three Association historians with advanced degrees in public history provided insight into the presidents and their respective administrations. Content experts and educators from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, the LBJ Presidential Library, and George Washington University provided insights on the history presented throughout the game as well.
“Education is critical to the Association’s mission and investment in civics is vital as the next generation is taught the awesome responsibilities of citizenship and considering different perspectives,” said Stewart McLaurin, President of The White House Historical Association. “We are excited to launch this new tool to help students understand the past as an essential key to understanding who we are today.”
The game presents students with the opportunity to investigate two key decisions from each of the presidencies of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Johnson, and provides educators with incredible flexibility to teach across U.S. History. With nearly 30 characters available to interview, students can play the game multiple times and learn new facts and perspectives with each gameplay.
The game can be used to teach different geographies, content, civics and historical timelines, allowing flexibility for teachers to use it in a variety of different classroom applications. And its content can be tied to current events.
Brief the Chief includes English Language Learner support and is available in Spanish.
On Civic Education and the iCivics Youth Fellowship
I was fortunate to get one of the best civic educations possible when it comes to the iCivics Youth Fellowship and my 8th grade “We the People” class. As a result, I know my constitutional rights and I feel very prepared to vote and otherwise engage.
But there were 200 other students in my grade level who opted out of civics, and I’m not sure a lot of my peers understand much about what is going on in government, how they are affected by it, and how they can affect it in return.
As part of the iCivics fellowship, I interviewed two groups of students—those who got the same classes I did those who did not.. The first group gave long, elaborate answers and there was open communication between the students. But when I interviewed kids who did not get this form of civic education, they gave one- or two- word answers, didn’t seem to really be familiar with the word “civics” or what it entailed, and didn’t really talk to each other. This exercise really put into perspective how even one single class can alter a person completely.
On the State of the Nation
It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when members of opposing political parties could “agree to disagree”—or even come together on certain issues. Today, it seems our elected officials are punished for working with members of another party, yet that’s the very foundation of the U.S. Constitution. As someone who is civically engaged, such actions don’t feel like serving the community—they feel antithetical to what they teach us in civics class.
When I think about what our nation could be, the word that springs to mind is “open.” Open to differences of opinion—not always having to be right. More open to listening to each other, and not always yelling.
On iCivics
With iCivics, it’s not just about supporting a program or a website. but actively supporting the next generation of this country. What iCivics does is amazing: it helps young people find the answers to questions they’re too afraid to ask. If “the next generation will “fix it,” then we need tools, knowledge, and support systems. We need the space to meet up a few times before figuring it all out and supporting programs that provide just this—a space to try, and mess up, and try again, and succeed—it fosters a true interest in our country.It’s about supporting an entire generation that can finally find its voice, and that will want to create a better world for all.
