Middle School History Teachers Julia Brice and Aleysha Taveras were awarded a Curriculum Development Grant and spent their summer designing a new civics unit and Grade 8 capstone project that aim to broaden the definition of civic engagement. Spence awards around 20 Curriculum Development Grants to faculty who identify desired student outcomes, create content, design assessments, and support the active engagement of all students in the classroom. Ms. Brice and Ms. Taveras pursued the grant “based on departmental and institutional concerns over civics education as well as our past experience as middle school affinity group leaders.” While civic engagement is often associated with the act of voting in the United States, their new unit illustrates how gaining knowledge about one’s community and government also constitutes a civic act.

This fall, Grade 8 students are learning about the Constitution, the electoral college, the Founding Fathers, the Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court. In a recent class, students parsed the original Bill of Rights and reinterpreted the amendments in their own words. They learned about the different branches of government, what makes our democracy distinct, and the system of checks and balances. They practiced civil discourse–a core Spence value–when they discussed the merits of the electoral college. While the unit was technically an added unit in their larger study of Early Modern History, Ms. Brice and Ms. Taveras introduced themes of community that will tie to the upcoming auto-ethnographic Grade 8 Capstone Project.

The civics unit spanned three weeks and culminated in a visit from Casey Danoff, a law clerk in the federal district court for the eastern district of Pennsylvania who recently completed a fellowship with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She spoke to students about her experience with the law and her passion for protecting citizens from gender-based discrimination. The students learned about her journey to law school and the process by which she identified her areas of interest. Two students moderated a question-and-answer portion at the end of Ms. Danoff’s presentation where they asked about her interest in crime and her future plans in the field of law. Ms. Brice and Ms. Taveras explained how Ms. Danoff provides one lens of what civic engagement looks like.

Ms. Brice and Ms. Taveras designed this unit for this year, but they hope to continue to develop the curriculum in the future. They felt this topic was especially salient now as the unit equips students with a vocabulary to make sense of the upcoming election. As the classes return their focus to the Early Modern period, the civics unit also provides a foundation for students to study the emergence of leaders and the development of earlier forms of government. Ms. Brice and Ms. Taveras’ work speaks to the History Department’s mission, which emphasizes the importance of connecting the past and the present in order to understand contemporary issues.