Transcript CHILDERN IN A DEMOCRACY - University of Sioux Falls

CITIZENSHIP
•Athens was the site of the
first democracy.
•Citizenship is an idea born
in ancient Greece.
What is a Citizen?
• To be a citizen is to hold a position of rights and
responsibilities in a society. In a democratic
society such as ours, citizens are rulers. The
government belongs to the people.
• If you were born in this country you are a U.S
citizen. If your parents are U.S. citizens, but you
were born in another country, you are also a U.S.
citizen. Citizens enjoy many freedoms and
rights. Citizens may vote in elections. They can
even run for political office. They also have many
duties such as paying taxes and defending their
country.
CLASSROOM
•Your classroom is a
miniature of a democratic
society. You and your
students are citizens of your
classroom and school.
Keep in mind the old saying that
“children learn what they live.”
• They are shaped by their experiences.
So, to teach and learn citizenship with
children, we must create a democratic
society for them to live in. We need to
treat children as more than just
students in our classroom but also
citizens in our classroom.
CLASSROOM DEMOCRACY
• In making the classroom a miniature democracy,
the children you work with will be selfgoverning. This means major responsibilities for
each child. This also means major rights for each
child. You need to create an atmosphere of
cooperation, courtesy behavior, and discipline.
The means there needs to be activities that
included team building, working and playing
together, and an atmosphere of support for each
other, and a commitment to individual and
collective interests.
CLASS ACTIVITIES
• The class meetings, the shared decision
making, the team work and projects, the
informal discussions, and the civil society
that you create in your classroom will be
the foundation. As students become
citizens of the classroom, you will set the
stage for the next step, that is, learning the
history and traditions of citizenship.
CLASSROOM – CIVIL SOCIETY
• This is the academic knowledge that you
and your “fellow citizens” will apply as
your classroom becomes a civil society.
School and community service projects
will follow as students begin to understand
that citizenship involves reaching out to
others, participating in the public square,
and respecting the rights of their fellow
human beings.
JOHN DEWEY
• When John Dewey wrote that knowledge comes
to life in activity, he was saying that textbook
information without application and testing in
experiences is dead knowledge. In the sense of
his quote, your classroom becomes an
experience in democracy! You and your students
are testing each day the ideas of rights and
responsibilities, freedom and duty, and civility
(courtesy behavior) and collaboration.
What is the Citizen’s Role
in American Democracy?
• Young children learn about individual
responsibility by helping to make
classroom rules and learning to follow
them. They also learn that people must
take responsibility for their actions.
These early experiences serve as the
foundation for increasingly sophisticated
experiences throughout the succeeding
school years.
SCHOOL IS A COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS
• This implies that the children and
teachers, administrators, and support staff
who go there will find themselves in a
communal setting. A true community is a
relational place where people work
together, play together, and share their
thoughts, feelings, and dreams.
JEAN PIAGET and LEV VYGOTSKY
• These theorists have addressed the ideas of
social knowledge. Social knowledge arises from
shared group experience. When children and
teachers play and work together on projects,
activities, and other aspects of school life, they
become bonded through their commonly held
knowledge and collective memory. This leads to
a sense of community, a sense of belonging – the
beginning of citizenship.
CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION
• Teaching citizenship education to young
children is one of the most important
contributions you can make as a teacher. The
children you teach will assume positions of
leadership and responsibility well into the 21st
century.
• Citizenship education at its best takes place at
two separate but related levels that we can call
the formal and the informal.
CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION
• Formal citizenship education involves the
academic study of history, civics,
literature, the arts, and other subjects.
Students need to learn the functions of
political systems at the local, state, and
national levels. They need to understand
the relationship of the United States to
other countries.
CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION
• Informal citizenship education is
experiential, often involving the life of
classroom, the playground, the
community, and the home. Formal
education initiates the process by exposing
the children to ideas, but ideas take hold
best when they are related to direct
experience. Examples:
DIRECT EXPERIENCES
• Create opportunities for service learning at all
levels K-12. – community projects
• Make your classroom and school miniature
democracies
• Be sure your students have opportunities to
work with others beyond the classroom –
volunteering, tutoring
• Connect the classroom to home – assign topics
for students to discuss with their families
• Take advantage of the opportunities to reflect on
the social/moral life of school – issues related to
fairness, sharing, cooperation, bullying,
cheating, or fighting.
IN LESSONS
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Study a wide variety range of topics
Use interactive lessons
Include service learning
Encourage student participation in school
governance
• Encourage extracurricular participation
• Use simulations – voting, trials,
legislature deliberations
IN SUMMARY
• A child is a citizen of a family, classroom,
school, community, state, country, and the
world.
• Students learn the ideas of citizenship best
when they are given the opportunities to
experience it in the classroom, the school,
and the community.
• These environments offer wonderful
possibilities for participation, cooperation,
and team building. These are the building
blocks of citizenship education.
Citizenship
• Do your share to make your school
and community better • Cooperate •
Get involved in community affairs •
Stay informed; vote • Be a good
neighbor • Obey laws and rules •
Respect authority • Protect the
environment • Volunteer
CITIZEN RAP
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We are good citizens,
You know it’s true.
We are good citizens in all we do.
We work hard and respect every rule,
Helping the community and our school.
We listen, share and always care,
We show good citizenship everywhere!
BOOKMARK SAYING
•“When all of us work
together, we become good
citizens and our country
•becomes stronger.”
• ~ Donna Forest
Internet Sites
• Ben’s Guide to Government
• Citizens’ Rights
• Teaching Citizenship’s 5 Themes
• Citizenship WebQuest
• Citizenship Activities
• Naturalization Requirements