Before becoming a teacher I worked in the field of social justice, politics, and policy making. One of my passions is community building. I want to share my previous experience with you because it felt very full circle as I drove home from the White Mountains of New Hampshire this summer.
Children are becoming more politically active to affect the outcome of their future. Two stories on New Hampshire Public Radio played side by side on my drive home from our camping trip. The first story was about the devastating Maui wildfires and the second story was regarding climate change litigation.[1] The interesting part of the legal challenge story was that children are the plaintiffs. In Montana and Hawaii children are suing government agencies to protect their state constitutional rights for a healthy future. Their goal is to affect policy decisions by state agencies for public projects to invest in solutions that will reduce the carbon footprint instead of increase it.
I began to think deeper about a program we have welcomed into the classroom, New Hampshire’s Kid Governor ® a program of NH Civics.[2] This civics program allows students in their fifth year to create a platform, make a video, be nominated and elected as their school nominee, and run for New Hampshire’s Kid Governor ® statewide. The highlights of the program for our school is students are empowered to learn more about civic participation. They are motivated to create an action plan for a topic for which they care deeply.
As a teacher, the program provides an easy to adapt curriculum to teach civics to students. Through the curriculum activities we had challenging discussions about the history of voting; including who was allowed to vote and when. We discussed voter registration and how it differs from state to state, and political parties in a non-partisan way that included all beliefs.
The opinions expressed in Montessori Life are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of AMS.