It started with the idea that it would be really awesome if students had a day to talk about their rights and teach and learn from each other all day long. All. Day. Long. Could we do it? How could we do it? And when? It was decided, Constitution Day, September 17th was the occasion. Now we needed the vehicle. That was easy too, iCivics! The Government team constructed an iCivics gaming competition involving every 10th grade government student (almost 400) along with 100 law students as guides that lasted all day. With a leader board, prizes and bling for class winners and announcement of the overall day winners, it was a celebration of the exquisite confluence of civic education, gaming and government.
Flash forward to January when iCivics Executive Director Louise Dube visited my classroom along with a film crew to capture footage for a video honoring their MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. In conversation I mentioned to her the all-day competition and shared the media coverage in our school newspaper.
Three conference calls and several emails later and I find myself at Georgetown University on a hot July day introducing iCivics “Do I Have a Right” to 150 Junior Statesmen from all over the country. As I modeled the game on the screen for the large audience, I could hear the students’ start to murmur “Oh this is cool.” “So it’s a game? Like a contest?” “Does speed count?” “Wait, I thought I knew all the first amendment rights, what am I missing?” As the goals, strategies and purpose of the game became clearer to the students, the noise level rose. Even sitting in their seats in the large lecture classroom, they were putting themselves in the game. They were vested and some were already looking up rights in pocket Constitutions and on their phones.
I had to cut them off, however, to break for lunch. This was just the introduction. They were about to spend the next three hours in competition against each other in small teams. The grand prize: A once-in-a-lifetime behind the scenes tour of the Supreme Court. I “caught” some students studying their Bill of Rights at the deli counter during lunch. Finally, students filed into their assigned classrooms and with a few directions to get into their teams of three, they were logged in and ready to compete!
As I moved from room to room my ears filled with the best sounds as students huddled together, elbow to elbow choosing their attorneys based on their constitutional strengths, comparing different rights each amendment protected and looking up the ones they were not sure of yet. There was a hum and an energy in each room. It was competitive and collaborative at the same time, an ideal combination to bring about deep learning. The conversation is so important. iCivics games can be played by students individually, and they will help them learn about rights, powers, government processes, decision-making, and fundamental democratic values. They can be played as a whole class, as we modeled in our introduction, and students have the benefit of hearing from their peers and trying to reach a class consensus applying knowledge to decision-making in the game. Either way, it is a win.
But the real beauty, and the biggest educational bang for our buck, is when students play, as they did, in small teams. Each team member is needed, heard, valued, and engaged. They get to wrestle with their knowledge and how to apply it. They have more at stake since they contribute to a team, yet have a safer place to take risks as they have forged new bonds with classmates they did not know prior to the game. Students from Texas, California, New Jersey and other states introduced themselves and got right down to work. I watched as after they finished each round they relaxed and then really started talking to each other. As students connected socially this propelled even richer teamwork as they got right back to work on the next round.
Indeed, it is not only the content and skills of civic education that come out in this format, but the dispositions as well. Students have to navigate real-world skills of leading, facilitating, decision-making, compromise and consensus-building, all while learning and reinforcing civic knowledge. The transferability of this experience is immeasurable.
Because civic educators are tasked not only with teaching knowledge and skills, but also with the dispositional education of our young citizens, the process is every bit as important as the content. In no other content area is this more important than in the social studies.
After an exhilarating day of gaming and government, it heartens me to know that 150 of our most promising young citizens have had an experience that not only extended their civic knowledge, but refined their civic dispositions as well. The future looks bright. Very bright.
D. Phillips