Good afternoon, friends. This post is simply a compilation of resources that can be used to teach about concepts, ideas, actions, or anything else connected to the events of 06 January 2021. We will add to these over time.

Civics in Real Life
Sedition
Controlling the Chambers
Inching Towards Inauguration
Presidential Transition
The Electoral College
Civil Disobedience
The First Amendment
The Consent of the Governed
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Resources on the Foundations of Democracy (from AFT)
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Peaceful Transitions (from Bill of Rights Institute)
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Resources from the National Constitution Center
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From CSPAN:

Lesson Plan: Reactions to the January 6 Attacks on the U.S. Capitol
Lesson Plan: The History of Contested Presidential Elections 
 Lesson Plan: Learning from Previous Presidential Transitions
Video Clip: Electoral Count Interrupted as Mob Enters Capitol
Video Clip: Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) on Electoral Count Vote  
Video Clip: The Process for Counting Electoral Votes in Congress
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How to Have a Civil Civic Conversation (from Constituting America)
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Responding to the Insurrection (from Facing History)
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Multiple Resources Collected from #sschat

Good morning friends! On Wednesday 09 December, we virtually hosted Dr. Robert Cassanello for a webinar to introduce teachers to the 1920 Ocoee Election Day Massacre, which is soon to be required instruction in Florida Schools. Professor Cassanello explored the history and meaning of that horrible event, as well as how it has been considered over time. The webinar included a discussion of resources that could be used for instruction, as well as ways to align the content to standards. We are incredibly grateful to Dr. Cassanello for his participation! If you missed the session, you can view it on our channel at Schooltube (which includes some more features connected to the video that you may find beneficial) or simply click play below.

In addition, Dr. Cassanello was kind enough to share with us the PowerPoint (email us for this!) and resource list for his session (linked below). You should also consider the Civics in Real Life resource that discusses the key details of the massacre itself.

We hope that you find benefit in this webinar, and if you want to get on our newsletter mailing list, send us an email for news on updates, opportunities, and upcoming webinars and resources!

In happy news, the Florida Council for the Social Studies’ 63rd Annual Conference, which had been postponed due to COVID-19, has now been rescheduled as a virtual conference!

We so hope you will join the good folks at FCSS for this virtual conference. Work is being done to line up some excellent sessions and speakers, and we expect that this virtual conference will provide a new and more flexible opportunity to engage with colleagues while expanding professional learning!

You can register for the conference here. And if you want to present (and we hope you do!), you can submit your proposal here! Proposals are due no later than 30 November.

Come join us, and make good trouble.

Good morning, friends. I wanted to share with you an opportunity that you might find beneficial. Earlier this year, the Florida legislature mandated that teachers be prepared to teach about the 1920 Ocoee Election Day Massacre by the 2021-2022 school year. While Florida does have a task force working hard on how it should be taught, we are honored to bring you a new learning opportunity in December.

We will be joined by noted expert and researcher Dr. Robert Cassanello on Wednesday, December 9 at 3pm to talk about what you need to know about this tragic and horrific event, and how you can approach it in your classroom. We hope that you can join us, even if you aren’t in Florida. This event is symbolic of so much of the effort to secure voting rights in the face of oppression, and aligns well with instruction on both the civil rights effort and the backlash to it.

You can register for this webinar here. Questions? Contact us!

Are you looking for some free, self-paced professional development? Be sure to check out what the Lou Frey Institute/FJCC offers. These are all FREE courses and can be completed at your own pace.

Our most extensive free course series is the Civics Classroom. This four course series focuses on preparing civics teachers with the pedagogy necessary for good instruction! Be sure to visit the Civics Classroom page to get the syllabus for each course in this series.

A Prepared Classroom provides teachers with an understanding of:

• Course descriptions and the Civics End-of-Course Test Item Specifications,
• How to utilize curriculum and pacing guides,
• The value of strategic planning and preparing for instruction, and
• Making informed decisions about instruction based on formative and summative data.
• (This course has a module that targets primarily civics in Florida but can still be applicable for any teacher!)

A Cognitively Complex Classroom provides teachers with an understanding of:

• The role of cognitive complexity when facilitating instruction and assessment,
• Utilizing strategies and structures, and
• Developing learning activities that integrate English Language Arts and disciplinary literacy skills.

A Cohesive Classroom provides teachers with an understanding of:

• identifying the needs of students for scaffolded and differentiated supports aligned with the Universal Design for Learning and,
• how to develop a responsive civics classroom that builds academic and social-emotional competencies.

A Constitutional Classroom will provide teachers with an understanding of:

• Major ideas in the U.S. Constitution,
• How to apply disciplinary literacy skills, and
• Preparing for instruction to make content accessible for all learners.

This last course was actually developed in collaboration with Dr. Charlie Flanagan of NARA’s Center for Legislative Archives and with Bay District Schools!

We now offer a course in what we hope will be a strong and long series for high school US history! The High School US History: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era is, like A Constitutional Classroom in the Civics course series, hosted by our friend Dr. Charles Flanagan from the National Archives’ Center for Legislative Archives and was developed in collaboration with our partners at Bay District Schools. 

The High School US History: Civil War and Reconstruction course will provide teachers with pedagogy, content, and resources for:

• the major ideas of the cause, course, and consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era
• primary sources and disciplinary literacy
• strategies and structures for accessible learning

You can get info to register for the new course and download the syllabus at the course page on Florida Citizen.

But what about you folks in high school US Government? We have a new course for you as well!

The High School Government Classroom: Building Critical Knowledge course will provide teachers with pedagogy, content, and resources for:

• lesson planning and preparation in social studies
• the principles of American democracy
• the US Constitution
• Founding Documents
• Landmark Cases

For Florida teachers, this course is intended to help you prepare students for the new Civic Literacy Assessment. However, it also provides a basic foundation in US government content, pedagogy, and resources and aligns with the newHigh School US Government modules on Civics360! (And there will be a post on the launch of that new resource later!). 

You can get info to register for the course and download the syllabus over at, you guessed it, Florida Citizen.

We hope that you find these new courses beneficial!

Questions? Email Steve!

Friends, hope this post finds you well on this Election Eve! We have been working hard on improving our resources. In addition to our Civics in Real Life tool, we of course have Civics360. That latter platform has entered a beta stage for relaunch, and I wanted to take a few minutes and show some of the changes coming to Civics360.

The most significant change is to the registration process. Traditionally, teachers and students would register individually, and we asked for emails, names, and all that fun and potentially privacy-problematic stuff. Well, recognizing this, we have moved forward with updating the system to much easier and whole new process.

Teacher Registration

When you access Civics360, you’ll be asked to select an account type. As an educator, you would select that option.

Once you have selected that, enter your the email and password you want to use. You’ll be asked to create a profile.

Enter your information. A new change that should benefit folks not working in a Florida public school: you can now enter your own school!

Once you have completed your initial profile, you will be taken to your own page. Here, finish your profile with some more specifics.

Now, a brand new feature that we are adding: classrooms! You will be able to create your own ‘class’.

Note the code that was created for that class. That’s important! Right now, I have no one enrolled, as you will see below.

I guess I need some students! So I will send them to Civics360, armed with the classroom code I created.

The entire registration process for students has changed significantly! Now, they will get a randomly generated user name, and can create their own password. They should also enter the classroom code you created! You’ll note that it auto-identifies what the class is. So let’s pop back over to the teacher profile!

And I have the first student in my class! With this new approach, the goal is to let you handle registration and password recovery yourself, immediately, as well as tracking student work and having separate class groups.

Now, THIS IS ALL STILL IN THE BETA TESTING PHASE and we are working hard to ensure it is bug free and does everything we need it to do. I do not yet have an estimated launch time, but we are excited to at least give you a preview! The most important change is to the student registration process. We will no longer ask them for ANY information, to better address privacy concerns, and it is now essentially a one click registration for students!

I hope that this preview of what is to come was interesting, and that you will continue to use Civics360 and the other resources that we offer. Questions? Shoot us an email anytime!

Educator friends, we are doing a webinar tomorrow evening with the American Federation of Teachers Share My Lesson folks, on using Civics in Real Life and Civics360 to teach about civics and current events. We hope that you can join us! Webinar opportunity from the Lou Frey Institute

Thursday, October 15, 2020 – 5:00PM EDT – FREE – https://sharemylesson.com/teaching-resource/civics-real-life-resources-virtual-instruction-326489

Join Christopher Spinale, Val McVey and Steve Masyada, all of the Lou Frey Institute and Share My Lesson for a conversation on virtual resources for civics and current events. ·

Some of the most difficult topics for educators to address in the classroom are current events. How do we approach current events in a way that connects to our content while also allowing opportunities for both discussion and engagement? · This webinar will share virtual resources that can be used to address current events from a civics lens. The Lou Frey Institute will discuss its Civics in Real Life series, a weekly series which uses civics concepts to explore current events in a one page, student friendly, image rich text. This includes hyperlinks to related content and a closing activity that encourages reflection and engagement. · The webinar session will discuss ways in which this resource can be integrated into both face to face and virtual instruction while also discussing the use of the free Civics360 content platform as a means of building foundational knowledge through a virtual resource. · Available for one-hour of PD credit. A certificate of completion will be available for download at the end of your session that you can submit for your school’s or district’s approval.

It’s Founders Month! According to the Florida Department of Education,

Section (s.) 683.1455, Florida Statutes (F.S.), designates the month of September as American Founders‘ Month and s. 1003.421, F.S., recognizes the last full week of classes in September in public schools as Celebrate Freedom Week.

So what does this mean for our schools and kids and teachers? Basically, it’s time to do some learning about the men and women who have helped shape this state and this country. Here on our Florida Citizens blog, we’ll be doing a brief overview of a particular Founder, Framer, thinker, or shaper of this nation and how they made an impact.

Judith Sargent Murray was born in pre-Revolutionary Boston, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant family. It as fortunate for us, as it was for her, that her parents believed in educating their daughters as well as their sons. Unfortunately, this education was limited to reading and writing; Sargent Murray had little opportunity for advanced education. Instead, she took advantage of her father’s vast library and educated herself in history, civics, philosophy, literature, and so much more. This education, so much of it self-taught, she put to work as a writer and thinker and, most importantly, advocate for the rights of women and the equality of the sexes.

For Judith Sargent Murray, the way in which we consider the roles and educations of boys and girls was unjust, stifling, and wrong. In her seminal work, ‘On the Equality of the Sexes‘ (1790), she raises doubts about the argument that men are inherently the intellectual superiors to women:

“Yet it may be questioned, from what doth this superiority, in thus discriminating faculty of the soul proceed. May we not trace its source in the difference of education, and continued advantage?…As their years increase, the sister must be wholly domesticated, while the brother is led by the hand through all the flowery paths of science”

In other words, the only reason men can claim superiority to women is because we do not give women the same education and opportunities as men! This theme would reappear throughout her work over the years, and she never ceased believing that America offered a great opportunity for a reconsideration of the role and education of girls. The new nation, after all, needed women who would raise the next generation to believe in and understand the American spirit and model, a ‘Republican motherhood‘ that required educated, passionate, and (to a degree for its day) liberated women.

Sargent Murray practiced what she preached, educating the children in her house as she believed they deserved and as was right. She also wrote hundreds of essays and letters and articles, many of which were published under pen names in such a way as to hide the fact that she was a woman, for she feared her arguments would be automatically rejected. She was a ‘Founding Mother’ of the pursuit of equal rights, an advocate for the American project, and someone who encouraged the new nation to live up to the ideals it promised. You can learn more about the philosophy of wonderful Judith Sargent Murray from this keynote powerpoint.

Grab the PowerPoint featured at the top of this post: JSM

Check out the National Constitution Center’s biographies of the Founding Fathers! https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/founding-fathers

It’s Founders Month here in Florida! According to the Florida Department of Education,

Section (s.) 683.1455, Florida Statutes (F.S.), designates the month of September as American Founders‘ Month and s. 1003.421, F.S., recognizes the last full week of classes in September in public schools as Celebrate Freedom Week.

So what does this mean for our schools and kids and teachers? Basically, it’s time to do some learning about the men and women who have helped shape this country. Here on our Florida Citizens blog, we’ll be doing a brief overview of a particular Founder, Framer, thinker, or shaper of this state or this nation and how they made an impact. Today, we look at George Mason!

It’s American Founders’ Month in Florida. Today, we have one of the most important, but perhaps least remembered, Founders: George Mason.

Why does George Mason matter? After all, he was one of only three delegates to the Convention of 1787 who refused to sign the Constitution. But it is, indeed, that very refusal that tells us why George Mason matters: He is the Father of the Bill of Rights.

It was Mason’s vocal objections, and his work on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, that led to the drafting and incorporation of the Bill of Rights into our Constitution.

Even with the promise from the Federalists to include a Bill of Rights, Mason fought hard against ratification of the Constitution; his arguments failed to persuade enough Virginians to vote against ratification however. And his fervent and sometimes angry opposition to the Constitution in some ways destroyed his relationships with those who he fought beside for independence. In a letter to his son, he wrote that

You know the friendship which has long existed (indeed from our early youth) between General Washington and myself. I believe there are few men in whom he placed greater confidence; but it is possible my opposition to the new government, both as a member of the national and of the Virginia Convention, may have altered the case.

Indeed, Washington himself was bitter about Mason’s opposition, and they never reconciled before Mason’s death in 1792. Despite his opposition to the Constitution, however, is to George Mason that most Americans owed their first tastes of liberty under the new government and his Bill of Rights. You can learn more about George Mason from this excellent lesson provided by the Bill of Rights Institute. 

Grab the PowerPoint slide featured at the top of this post: George Mason AFM