A Teacher’s Early Civic Mirror Reflection.

Scott Kemp – a passionate educator, blogger, and teacher at Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute in Kitchener, Ontario, who just started using the Civic Mirror with his Grade 10 students this past semester – shared some incredibly insightful ideas and thoughts about the Civic Mirror and – more importantly – the effectiveness of games in education.

Check out Scott’s post here, and be sure to read and comment on some of his other thought-provoking ideas in his The Radical Tactical Shift.

For those teachers and students inside Civic Mirror World, keep an eye out for Mr. Kemp’s simulated country called Rawcopia in the forums, an intriguing name to say the least.

This month’s showcase teacher is Matt Anderson of the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) in Pittsburgh. Matt began using the Civic Mirror at The Urban Assembly School of Design and Construction in New York City, he then took a position teaching education methods at CCAC where he continues to use the Civic Mirror. Matt uses CM to expose education students to new and innovative ways to instruct and keep kids engaged in learning.

Through Matt’s tutelage these education students are learning valuable lessons about innovative teaching methods in the classroom. Research proves that what teachers are exposed to and use in the first four years of teaching predicts what they’ll continue to do for the rest of their career.

In Matt’s CCAC country of Beautopia he made great use of the online discussion forums, posing questions and assignments for his student teachers. By using the forum he not only opened the door for great discussions, but also exposed them to an cutting edge teaching and learning tool.

For example, Matt challenged his students to do the following:
“As educators, it’s our job to create learning experiences that promote student understanding and there’s no better way to do this than using material that relates to the students.

Your assignment is to create a lesson using connections from the Civic Mirror. Make sure to be specific and include examples so we know what you are trying to do!”

His students’ ideas were fantastic:

Natalya would use CM in a science class for a unit on geography to emphasize how human actions affect our environment: “They [the students] would try to make businesses into trees and such. They would do activities on how in real life this affects the earth and the life living on it. Then, they would do the opposite. They would destroy all green hexes and see how that affected them. They would look into what we are doing to the environment by destroying rainforests and farming on land and depleting it of its value. They would then compare and contrast what they discovered.”

Bunny, a congress member in Beautopia, would use the Civic Mirror in an English course: “Civic Mirror would be a great tool to use for an English Unit in which students would monitor the game experiences and write several personal reflections regarding emotional effects of humanistic behavior, personal beliefs on government control as well as a predictive paper on hidden agendas.”

Both Natalya and Bunny “get it,” students learn better when they:

a) experience what they’re learning, and
b) reflect on how what their learning relates to their life and the world they live in.

Kudos to Matt for promoting educational change for the next generation of teachers!

In a recent interview with Education News Colorado, Peter Levine, Director of  CIRCLE, outlines several of the myths surrounding civic education in the United States, and convincingly argues why the topic is vitally important for the future of American democracy. Levine explains:

• collaboration and problem-solving are in decline
• people without college education are not participating in civic work and duties
• there exist vast gaps in civic engagement and opportunties
• civic education can improve life-outcomes for youth

Thanks to Peter Levine for the outstanding work and research, and to Education News Colorado for the great interview. It only encourages us to work harder to grow and develop the Civic Mirror and contribute to the improvement of civic education across the continent.

Listen to the podcast, or read Alan Gottlieb’s podcast summary and comments on the Education News Colorado website.

In this talk, Ali Carr-Chelman highlights how our school system is out of sync with the world of ‘boys’ (i.e. “active kids”), and how games can be used to re-engage them.

For all of us using the Civic Mirror, this talk totally validates the excitement and engagement games add to the learning process. What do you think about this talk?

Education and Leadership Roles Key Factors!

As reported by Jan Goehring at The Thicket, the first ever “Civic Health Assessment” has been released by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC), an organization that tracks, measures and promotes civic participation, recently released reports on the civic health of eight states: California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

While the news wasn’t all bad, here are some of the key findings as they relate to the Civic Mirror and citizenship education:

• Americans with more education dominate civic engagement
• Those who assume leadership roles in community groups are highly involved in all other forms of civic engagement, but make up just 8.5% of our total population.
• The Internet appears to build civic health

Click the red cross for the summary of key findings.

The Civic Mirror is a tool that helps innovative teachers bring the 21st century into their classrooms. Like any tool, users must be creative and inventive to get the best results. One such innovator is Carly Althauser of College Place Middle School in Edmonds, Washington. In this post we showcase Carly and her innovations.

Carly’s History With The Civic Mirror
Carly, now well into her second year using the Civic Mirror, has found the program beneficial to students of all types. From the enthusiastic learner to students struggling with a learning disability to those who are just going through the motions, Carly has found that “learning moves beyond textbooks and allows—actually, demands—that students learn through experiences.” This process of learning, experiencing, reflecting, and connecting is the corner stone of the Civic Mirror philosophy.

Carly’s Innovations
Carly has created several new documents that have helped her students better understand the complexities of government and economics while using the Civic Mirror.

First, she created the Political Party Caucus (Middle School) document. By breaking the complex caucus process down into clear instructions, Carly’s made it easier for her students to understand the process more clearly while they are experiencing it. Her Political Party Caucus document includes:

• an outline a caucus and its objectives,
• tips to help students choose a party platform from (i) their own thoughts and values, and (ii) their Civic Mirror hidden agenda,
• a nomination form so everyone in the party knows which members are running for each positions.

Carly also created the Handouts for Government Members (Middle School Version) document. This handout explains what the responsibilities for each political position are (e.g. senator, house rep, president, etc.). It also clearly outlines how student politicians go about creating a bill, allowing them to take their experiential learning to a higher level more quickly.

Additionally, Carly created the Intro To Hidden Agenda Skeletal Notes Sheet (Middle School Version) which is a brilliant cloze activity that challenges students to recollect what they learned about the political spectrum before receiving their Civic Mirror hidden agendas. By working through this activity, students prior knowledge is activated, increasing the likelihood that it will be remembered into the future, and making every students’ hidden agenda assignment more relevant and rich with context.

Excellence in Teaching
By creating these documents, Carly has done several things:

• shown a commitment to teaching and learning by creating documents that her students will understand,
• achieved ‘student buy-in,’ which has
• increased engagement, which has
• improved learning and participating in her classroom, which has
• helped her students learn about U.S. government, history, and society in a 21st century way.

With such a mind for innovation and a desire to get the best from her students, it will be exciting to see where Carly goes from here.

To access Carly’s documents, visit the For Educators space on civicmirror.com. If you don’t have a Civic Mirror account, Request a Free Trial now.

Keep your eyes out on our blog as we’ll continue to showcase teachers using innovative methods to engage their students.