Knowing the Avenues- Service Learning Plan

Service Learning Plan
Title- “Knowing the Avenues”

Area of Service- Developing active political participation and awareness

Grade Level- 9-12

Subject Area- Government or Civics

Unit Description-
Step 1: The students will familiarize themselves with local, state or federal politicians directly connected to their community (elected by the community). For the politician they choose a short biographical sketch should be made containing their views, background, party affiliations, voting history, personal platforms, and interesting facts that shaped the persons life. This can be done through emails, telephone conversations, or personal interviews. The students will compose a summary of each person and post it on the class wiki.
Step 2: The next step in the service learning unit will be to conduct interviews from various people in the community (coaches, other teachers, parents, etc.), outside the students’ immediate family. The purpose of this step will be for the students to identify a need among the members of the community. The students will bring any needs found out from the interviews back to class where they will select the most important.
Step 3: Using the proper political ‘avenues’, whether it be local, state, or national, the students will use their knowledge gained in step 1 to lobby for the needs they discovered through their interviews. The goal will be to expose the students to the political process first hand and to show students how local, state, and federal governments function. By creating dialogues with politicians the students should gain an understanding of how important or frustrating the political process can be.

Standards:
SS.912.C.2.2: Evaluate the importance of political participation and civic participation.

SS.912.C.2.3: Experience the responsibilities of citizens at the local, state, or federal levels.

SS.912.C.2.5: Conduct a service project to further the public good.

SS.912.C.2.8: Analyze the impact of citizen participation as a means of achieving political and social change.

SS.912.C.2.10: Monitor current public issues in Florida.

SS.912.C.2.11: Analyze public policy solutions or courses of action to resolve a local, state, or federal issue.

SS.912.C.2.15: Evaluate the origins and roles of political parties, interest groups, media, and individuals in determining and shaping public policy.

SS.912.C.3.13: Illustrate examples of how government affects the daily lives of citizens at the local, state, and national levels.

Technologies/ Web Applications-
The students will add all of their content to the class wiki about each politician. After the needs (from the interviews) have been determined and selected they will be posted as well. The students will be required to contribute to the discussion about why each need is important or unimportant, worth campaigning for, or any other discussion topic that can be generated by the teacher after the needs have been isolated and examined.
The students will periodically add updates to the wiki from their efforts to expose/ campaign for the needs they choose. Any responses received from the politicians will be summarized and added to the site to create a constantly changing progress report. The wiki will be open for all to see, excluding the class discussions, which will be protected.
The students will use this wiki platform to connect to the community and the people where the needs generated to show any progress.


Assessment:
The students will be assessed on how much they participate in the online discussions and during the interviews process. This project can actually last all year and beyond, based on having the students conduct another round of interviews from the community. The students will also be assessed on how well they research the politicians and summarize any responses they receive. All responses will be examined by the teacher to make sure they are accurate with the responses received.
Activities or worksheets will also be used to examine how well the students understand the steps each politician must take to achieve the classes request or need. The students will also be judged on their creativity on the wiki, to ensure that students add any photos, video, or documents that may help their objectives.

30%- For composing biographical sketch of any politician used to fulfill a community members need.

20%- For interviewing members of the community and choosing which issue or need they are going to pursue. The group needs to provide the reasons they chose the need.

20%- For updating the wiki with new information received from any politician and writing responses to these updates.

10%- Contacting a politician and describing the need the group is lobbying for in a professional manner.

10%- Responding to teacher lead discussion points brought out during the course of the project on the class wiki.

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