Opportunities for teachers to get their students involved in local government work
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Calling All Social Studies, Government, & Humanities, Teachers!
Get your students involved in local government: In the drafting of the new Albuquerque City/Bernalillo Unification Charter As social studies and civics educators, it is clear that you realize the value of civics, economics, and history education in cultivating analytical, broadly thinking, active citizens in our global and local communities. We know that in order for viable democratic processes and institutions to become established that serve the public good in communities, its citizens must develop the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and habits, that enable democracy and democratic representation to work. |
Shared Vision is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that works to stimulate community awareness, dialogue, consensus, and action. As an organization, it serves as neutral convener and facilitator for civic involvement by providing means for public institutions to engage in conversations with the community, to develop constructive solutions, goals, visions and strategies, so as a to find areas of agreement between diverse groups of people (government, business, civic and neighborhood organizations) that lead to progress in developing a diverse democratic, viable Albuquerque community. Shared Vision accomplishes this mission through education, town halls, forums, workshops, and other types of community conversations. |
As you may be aware, the City of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County governments have proposed the drafting of a new charter that would unify the two government entities pursuant to Article 10, Section 11 of the New Mexico State Constitution. The City and County governments are appointing the second Unification Charter Commission (UCC) to draft a charter proposal to be presented to voters of Bernalillo County in the Fall of 2004. This Charter proposal is to be meticulously detailed in addressing the reorganization of government entities, the form the new government will take, the number of elected officials, taxation issues, types of services provided, land use issues, and the transition process, etc.
The UCC will be holding public forums for the purpose of receiving input from all county residents in the drafting of the Charter proposal, throughout the coming months. In particular, The UCC and Shared Vision would like to extend a special invitation to high school students and their teachers from civics/government, economics, history, gifted, student government, mock trial, and other social studies related programs and clubs to participate in this exciting process. This project offers the opportunity for young people, whose voices are often not heard in public decision-making processes, to be active in the process of creating our new local government through curriculum-tied research and presenting their comments at public forums. The Commission has already sent out official letters to the principles of all the local high schools.
• How Students and Teachers can get involved……
Shared Vision's goal in this project is to involve a diverse group of students and teachers throughout the Albuquerque high school community to create an active forum of classroom education and outreach (academic curriculum), and student research, discussion, and presentation (service learning) of the issues that are important to them as community members to the UCC. We are currently in the planning stages of the project and are soliciting input especially from educators on how best to implement and combine our energies and resources to get students involved.
Today it seems more pressing than ever to routinely teach local government in the schools, to educate citizens while they are still young how the day-to-day decisions that affect their lives are made and to empower them with this knowledge to later become active participants.
Here are some of the ideas we have in mind:
- Classroom discussion about how city and county government are currently organized; what is working and what is not; what improvements might be made
- Student discussion and research into alternative ways for organizing local government, and into the issues that are important to them as citizens of the local community
- Learning and practicing writing official business letters, government proposals, and legislation
- Preparing for and actually presenting at government forums and town hall meetings.
- Meeting with and presenting their ideas to the Charter Commission.
With civics/ government, law and mock trial programs, the project is easily integrated into classroom curriculum, or a service learning opportunity.
The Charter Commission and the community at large will benefit from the creative energy and ideas generated by these students, whose voices aren't often heard in these kinds of decision-making processes.
Educational, Skills-related, and Personal benefits to students
- Cultivation of public speaking, professional communication, writing, research, and analytical thinking skills
- The opportunity to be equal partners in community decision-making processes
- The opportunity to make connections in the public policy and non-profit communities locally.
For more information about the new charter and some of its sample language, please visit the UCC website. The address is http://www.abcucc.net. This website also contains UCC meeting schedules, minutes, report, and other information that may be of interest to the public, including an on-line interactive public discussion.
If you are interested as an educator in getting involved or if you have questions, please contact Shared Vision at 764-6078. A classroom visit can be arranged to discuss and inform students and teachers directly.
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