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Civic Engagement

In today's interconnected world, it's essential that we expand our notions of the who, what, and where of civic engagement. From early ages, young people have important ideas about how their schools, communities, and the larger world might be changed for the better. How do we support children, teens, and emerging adults to be effective and reflective agents of positive social change? What unique opportunities and challenges for civic and political participation are presented by digital and social media? Civic education needs to prepare youth not just for the voting booth but for deep engagement in their communities, with critical problems facing our world, offline and online, and from young ages.

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Article

HULA-ETTLE Code Book

A resource from Humanities & Liberal Arts Assessment (HULA)

HULA-ETTLE Code Book

A resource from Humanities & Liberal Arts Assessment (HULA)

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Book

Children Are Citizens Book 2017

A resource from Children Are Citizens

Children Are Citizens Book 2017

A resource from Children Are Citizens

People from all around the world know about Washington, DC. They talk about it, write about it, draw it, and make movies and TV shows about it. But almost always, we hear only the opinions and ideas of adults.

For this book we invited some of our youngest citizens—preschoolers, kindergartners, and first graders from DC Bilingual Public Charter School, Sacred Heart School, Seaton Elementary School (DCPS), E.W. Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School, Sunshine Early Learning Center, and J.O. Wilson Elementary School (DCPS)—to tell us what they think of our city. We asked them to share their ideas in order to help other children (and adults) learn about what is important about DC. We asked their teachers to help students research the city and discuss their ideas with classmates and children from the other schools. Each teacher guided the children in different ways. The result is Washington, DC: "What People Like Most is in This Book!,” a title suggested by the children that conveys their connection to their city. In this book you will find a set of descriptions, theories, and stories—shared in pictures, words, and photographs—that are thoughtful, informative, and sometimes surprising. As Sergio Spaggiari, a veteran educator from Reggio Emilia, Italy, notes, "It seems that for cities to be understood and appreciated, they should be talked about in stories." You can learn a lot about our city from the stories in this book.

Jim Reese

Director, The Professional Development Collaborative at

Washington International School

On behalf of the Children Are Citizens coordinating team: Mara Krechevsky, Ben Mardell, Nathalie Ryan, Joanne Seelig, Stacy Steyaert, and Tim Wright

Use the resource links on the right to view the full book.

Children Are Citizens Book 2017

Tool

Ethical Dilemmas and Value-Based Decisions

A resource from The Good Project

Ethical Dilemmas and Value-Based Decisions

A resource from The Good Project

All of us encounter challenges in our lives. Sometimes they are quickly or easily resolved, but other times, it is not clear what to do, and there is no right or wrong answer. This is a dilemma. When we are faced with a dilemma, it is important to stop and consider our choices carefully and recognize how our values will influence our decision. We must also think about how our decisions will affect others. Ethics is a word for the sense of right and wrong we have about our actions and their consequences.

This interactive online unit from The Good Project is intended for a teenage audience and is based on the project’s GoodWork Toolkit curriculum. It includes two animated videos in which young people encounter ethical dilemmas, which are paired with reflective values-based activities and questions. Through this unit, students will learn to recognize how personal values influence decision-making and also come to understand what it means to make an ethical decision.

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Article

Children Are Citizens: The Everyday and the Razzle-Dazzle

A resource from Children Are Citizens

Children Are Citizens: The Everyday and the Razzle-Dazzle

A resource from Children Are Citizens

How do children get to know their city and the city get to know its children? How often are children asked their opinions about their city? The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) established that in addition to children’s human rights to protection from harm and provision of an adequate standard of living, children also possess civil rights to participate in the cultural and civic activities of their communities. We, the authors of this article, maintain that children are indeed citizens from birth with the right to participate in the civic life of their cities. Cities belong to the adults and children who live there—even young children, who are capable of generating compelling insights about their communities.

The recognition of children as citizens is an essential pillar of the Reggio schools. Sustaining the strong bond between children’s and adults’ destinies has characterized 50 years of dialogue and cultural and political collaboration between the city of Reggio and its municipal preschools and infant-toddler centers. Loris Malaguzzi, founder of the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy, believed that schools are a critical context for fostering the relationship between children and the city. Once Malaguzzi said:

Our children go outside of the school as often as they can. They go to discover what is there or not in the city and to reflect and maybe conquer, with the help of the adults, what could be there . . . [They go] to strengthen relationships with cultural and sports institutions, to run in the fields, to meet the farmers . . . [They go] to discover people’s most beautiful trades, where and how their fathers and mothers work, to make friends with the elderly in their nursing home— images that are missing from their eyes and minds but that are essential to launch themselves into life, into the future. They invite to school the farmer and the factory worker, to hear their stories, their problems, the conditions of the work, and to understand the meaning of life, to feel they are part of a wider community. (see also Cagliari et al., 2016)

How might we help children imagine their futures as active members of their communities? Schools are an ideal setting for fostering a dialogue between children and the city. Like the ancient Greek agora, classrooms can serve as laboratories for life in a democratic community—places where knowledge and culture are both created and transmitted. When children encounter other perspectives—when they discuss, argue, and compare ideas—they are building understanding and making public that which had been private. Cities also provide a construct that three-, four-, and fiveyear- olds can understand—places they can experience and to which they can respond.

This article is written for those who wish to foster a relationship between children and their cities. We start with two examples of children’s contributions to their communities, one from Reggio Emilia—a city with a long and rich history of connecting children to their community, and one from Washington, DC—a city that has more recently built child-community connections. We close by identifying three lessons learned about engaging children in their communities.

From Innovations in Early Education: The International Reggio Emilia Exchange, v. 23, n. 4, published by NAREA (North American Reggio Emilia Alliance)

Download the PDF (under Resource Links) to continue reading this article.

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Article

Accessing the Humanities

A resource from Humanities & Liberal Arts Assessment (HULA)

Accessing the Humanities

A resource from Humanities & Liberal Arts Assessment (HULA)

Assessment in the fields of the humanities and humanistic social sciences has been a durably challenging enterprise, regardless of whether the target of assessment is student learning, teacher or faculty performance, or the experience of public humanities audiences. Over the course of the last four years, our research team on Humanities and Liberal Arts Assessment (HULA) has developed a novel methodology for tackling this task. Our purposes in revisiting the question of whether it is possible to design assessment instruments that are appropriate to work in the humanities have been twofold. First, we have sought to equip humanistic practitioners—whether on campus or in public humanities settings—with tools to translate the impact of their work into the vocabulary of policy-makers and funders. Second, we have sought to equip these practitioners with tools that can provide meaningful insights into their work and support continuous improvement.

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