³Civic Engagement in Teacher Education: The Public Achievement experience²
2005. Tony Filipovitch, Clark Johnson, Joe Kunkel. (due out soon in)
Quick
Hits for Educating Citizens, edited by James L. Perry and Steven G. Jones
Indiana
University Press. Bloomington, Indiana
This is the story of a departmental approach to civic engagement. The Social Studies Teaching program at MSU inserted a year-long Public Achievement service learning experience and an associated year-long seminar in democracy & citizenship into the teacher-training program, between the first course (SoSt 200, ³Introduction to the Social Studies²) and the methods course (SoSt 450 ³Teaching the Social Studies²).
The students form a cohort of ³coaches² who each lead a team of 4-8 middle-school children in ³Public Achievement² (PA), a national program for teaching children and youth a democratic process for community involvement1. The emphasis is on process‹teaching the skills of civic engagement and democratic process (for example, the children choose their team¹s focus, not the coach)‹and on ³policy²‹the goal of the activity is to ³make a change² in your community (which can be as local as the school community or as large as the globe). The teams (middle school students and their college coach) meet weekly, from October to April, for one 40-minute class period each week. The coaches also enroll concurrently in a seminar called ³Democracy and Citizenship,² which focuses on concepts of democracy and civic engagement, and on skills useful in the classroom. There is also a small team of ³mentors² (4-6 people), recruited from the previous year¹s coaches. These mentors observe 4-5 teams each week and meet with those coaches for debriefing, leading a general discussion and providing both written and oral feedback to each coach. The team of mentors also meets with Instructor and site supervisor at end of each PA day to debrief and plan the following week.
This approach varies somewhat from the ³standard² PA approach. While it stresses the same core concepts and leads the children through the same community-action process, it is integrated into the regular school day and extends for the better part of the entire school year. Further, the team coaches are simultaneously enrolled in a separate college course which includes both conceptual and pedagogical issues related to PA.
This approach is notable for the wide range of learning outcomes that it achieves‹and the wide range of learners for whom it achieves them. There are at least five levels at which learning occurs: the children, the coaches, the mentors, the faculty, and the institutions.
Children: The children learn and practice a number of skills. They learn the skills for engaging in the democratic process--setting agendas, leading meetings, recording the decisions and actions of the group, writing mini-grants, writing (and defending) action plans to authority figures. In addition, they learn the formal language for talking about the democratic process, repeatedly using terms like ³citizenship,² ³public,² ³diversity,² and ³accountability.² And they practice presenting their ideas, at first in small group meetings with school authorities, but finally by making a formal, public presentation of the outcomes at a Final Assembly. Further, in the process of researching and acting on their issue, the students develop some direct insight into how an issue is brought to the public agenda and how that agenda is influenced.
Coaches: The coaches receive a closely mentored initial experience with a small group of middle school students. For many of them, this is their first experience leading a group of students on their own, and there is an advantage in having a small group rather than a full class of 25-30. The coaches also have the opportunity to reflect both on process and content of civic engagement activity. For many this is their first introduction to ³action research,²2 by which theory and practice are placed in dialogue with each other. The coaches also share their experience with other coaches‹both in PA and in seminar‹which leads to learning from others¹ experience. Finally, the coaches develop some skill in managing the interface between school and community. They learn to deal with issues of student responsibility (for example, what do you do when the team had an assignment to complete by the next meeting, and no one comes prepared), comportment (for example, how should the team behave as they walk through the halls on their way to make a presentation to the principal), presentation of self (for example, what phone etiquette should the team members practice when they call community businesses to request donations of goods or money for their project), and networking (for example, they often do ³influence maps² which chart out who has an interest in their issue and who is in a position to influence what they can do about it).
Mentors: For the mentors, the focus of their action research shifts from community engagement to the skills of reflective teaching. Having already done it themselves, they now have the opportunity to observe and compare the teaching styles (and the resulting learning) of other coaches. Further, they must practice the skill of providing constructive criticism‹every week, for 24 weeks. We have observed that this creates a significant maturing process in student teachers; as a result of this process, they understand better what their own teaching supervisor is doing and they take advice and correction much more positively. Finally, the mentors create and teach their own lessons as part of seminar that is paired with PA. This has the effect of moving them forward in their careers as teachers, and documents their ability to provide professional training to peers.
Faculty & Program: For the faculty, the PA project provides an excellent opportunity for ³learning by doing.² It is not enough to lecture and lead discussions on democracy and civic engagement; the ideas are immediately put to the test of practice. This leads to richer classroom discussion (every student has some experiences to contribute to the discussions) and greater student motivation (there is no question about what they are going to do with ³all this theory²). It also gives the teacher some practice in moving concepts from the college level to middle school and (in the seminar) to high school. Often, after years of graduate study and teaching to adults, we become comfortable in the morass of detail and qualified propositions that are the stock of our professional discourse. Figuring out how to teach it to children (older, rapidly maturing children, but still fairly naïve and inexperienced) requires one to focus on the central ideas and to express them clearly. In the process, we have discovered that our own research has become more focused and the ³so what?² question is more easily answered.
From the programmatic and institutional side, we are finding that the issues raised in PA have been diffusing to other courses in the social studies. The students themselves are raising issues (both of content and pedagogy) in their teacher-training courses, and the faculty have found PA a rich source of practical examples for other courses that we teach. The PA program has also required collaboration across institutions. The team coaches have had to learn (and enforce) the school rules, and must prepare their team to explain their issue and action plans for the principal¹s approval. There is also a project coordinator who is paid a stipend by the school district but is supervised by the PA faculty instructor as well as by the school principal. The need for funds (for the mini-grants that students write, as well as for underwriting the t-shirts and pizza for the final assembly) has required the program coordinator to ³sell² the project to the community. This has not proven to be a hard sell‹the local newspaper often does a story on one or more of the student projects, and the students themselves are making many community contacts.
Notes: