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 Utopia Project
Citizen Movement Project
 Action Project

The Class
The teacher
The students
The school

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Participation in Government class satisfies the state requirement for a semester long government class and is required for graduation, but does not have a Regents test associated with the class. This makes the curriculum slightly more flexible than other social studies classes that culminate in a state exam.

Course Curriculum Map
The Participation in Government core curriculum is designed to be a culminating course of study that focuses on Social Studies Learning Standard 5—Civics, Citizenship, and Government (the civics standard). Participation in Government is the civics capstone of a student's K-12 social studies experience. Upon entering 12th grade, students should be ready to synthesize and apply this content-rich experience to the study of contemporary and/or historic public issues and to increase the student's awareness of their rights and responsibilities as a citizen. (taken from the foreword of the document)

State curriculum
State Curriculum - external link

 

The class is held mostly in a computer lab because Elfrank utilizes a website as the core component of his instruction. Students log onto the class website at the beginning of each period where they find the day's assignments, readings, assessments, rubrics, and Sharepoint, a space for online discussions. On days when the class is in a traditional classroom, Elfrank leads large class discussions, or teaches skills with his laptop and a projector.


class image
Class in the lab

 

 

 class website
Click on the image to go to the class website


“I would like the students, and I think I had success with this last term, I'd like the students to emerge from this class feeling empowered that they can effect change and that they have acquired some rudimentary skills for them to effectively engage in civic life. The end project is the action project where they have to identify an issue they have interest in and take a stand and do something/a project. Some of them did petition, some letter writing, some educational outreach … Of course it all has to work with the context that all this kids have after school jobs. It is very hard, so a lot of cyberactivism, I guess you would call it – online type activism. But I really encourage them to go out in the community, some of them worked on the soup kitchens…” - John Elfrank

[Click View video]

"I think it certainly ties in that somebody's values are a very key motivator..."
Students' reflections about the class