Tag: civics

2015 NESSC High School Redesign Conference – Presentation on Political Literacy

Dear CSC Students and Parents, I wanted to send a big thank you to my current and former students for their recent participation in the High School Redesign Conference in Boston this past week.  The conference was sponsored by the New England Secondary School Consortium (NESSC) and the Great Schools Partnership (GSP).  These organizations both…




Political Literacy – What it is and why we should teach it.

What is political literacy? Political literacy means having the basic skills, understandings, and attitudes required to take an active and well educated role in a democratic society.  Why should schools teach political literacy. In a world with so many problems in need of political solutions we need citizens who are capable of filtering through all of…




Rethinking Politics in the Classroom by Daniel Judt

This was an excellent article written by the son of Tony Judt in The Nation.  The article is no longer available on The Nation’s website, but I was able to resurrect the article by finding a cached version of the page.  (Note: the link to the article on The Nation’s website now appears to be working)…




Heeding Dworkin’s Call for Contemporary Politics in U.S. Classrooms

The following is an excerpt from an article entitled “Three Questions for America“, written by the late Ronald Dworkin.  The excerpt helps explain the purpose of this blog, which is to promote the collaborative development of a new school civics course that helps all students develop the necessary knowledge, skills, and dispositions required to take…




U.S. History – Week 17

Overview The plan this week is to finish up our thematic study of the framework of the government. We will continue our study of the supreme court and some of the “landmark cases” that historians discuss. The week will wrap up with some interest driven inquiries into remaining aspects of our central government in the…




U.S. History – Week 16

Overview The plan this week is to continue our thematic unit on the Federal government. We had a great class on Friday, taking care of all of the loose ends that made it to our “parking lot” white-board. This week, we will pick up where we left off last week and talk about one of the…




U.S. History – Week 14

Overview Welcome back folks! I hope you had a restful and enjoyable break. This week in U.S. History, we begin our chrono-thematic exploration of government in the United States. Although our studies will by no means conclude this topic, we will seek to get a good understanding of the general framework of government in the…