Category Archives: civics in real life

Highlighting Some Civics in Real Life Resources for Current Events

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So, some folks may be aware that we have been providing mostly weekly resources around civics concepts and current events the past couple of years. This post is an opportunity to highlight some older and some newer CRL’s that you might find useful in thinking about how to touch on current events with your students. Please also keep in mind that you can easily search the database to see if there is a concept or event you are looking for. You can always email us if you want one created and see if it’s on our drawing board!

Presidential Power and Executive Authority

Are executive branches accountable to the rule of law?

What are vetoes and how do they work?

What does the president have the right to keep private?

What is the symbolic and constitutional purpose of the State of the Union address?

What are executive orders and how can they impact us?

Congressional Power and Actions

What is the purpose of impeachment and how does it work?

How do congressional expulsions work and how often do they occur?

What is a “motion to vacate” and what happens after a House speaker is removed?

How does the Speaker election work and who runs it?

What is the role of the committee system in Congress?

Constitutional and Civic Concepts

What is the line between peaceful protest and the threat of sedition?

How does the First Amendment apply during a time of crisis?

What does the U.S. Constitution require in terms of qualifications to hold national office?

What is a caucus and how is it similar to and different from a primary election?

What is actually in the US Constitution?

Let’s take a look at how Florida and other southern states suppressed Black voters even after passage of the 15th Amendment.

Interesting and Important Supreme Court Cases

So we also have something we are calling The Docket Series, which covers both past, pending, and present cases. A couple of examples are below.

What is an application to vacate?

When state legislatures draw congressional districts how do they disentangle race from politics?

What is the ‘shadow docket’, and how does it impact the justice system?

Civics Education Resources for Black History Month

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Well, apologies, friends, it has been far too long since the last post. I will work on that. Today, I want to share some excellent resources for civic education during Black History Month.

The Plainest Demands of Justice (Bill of Rights Institute)

I encountered this excellent resource during the recent SOURCES conference at UCF. It is a primary source driven collection that, in the words of BRI,

“explores the efforts to realize the Founding principles of liberty, equality, and justice by exploring key periods in African American history.”

The entire collection is organized into multiple categories, and each category has a curated selection of primary sources (or playlists, because hey, have to be hip to the kids! :))

You can check out this resource here.

Civics in Real Life (Florida Joint Center for Citizenship at the Lou Frey Institute)

You may be familiar with the work of FJCC at LFI. Besides our extensive lesson plans, however, we have an ongoing weekly series called ‘Civics in Real Life’. This comes out every week and connects current events to civics concepts. We also have extensions of this series, however, and if you simply do a search for ‘black history’, you will find materials specifically developed to support instruction on figures, events, and organizations significant to black history.

To be clear, however, we cover related material throughout the course of the year, not just in February, so please feel free to take advantage of the search bar. If there is a topic not addressed that you would like covered, please feel free to reach out!

You can find the Civics in Real Life resources here.

The National Archives African American History Collection (NARA)

The National Archives has curated a great many primary sources into a strong collection for teachers to use in their classroom, covering a wide variety of cultural, social, economic, and political topics.

One of the things I like is that they have compiled a set of lesson plans that you can adapt for use in your classroom and with state standards and benchmarks.

You can find the excellent NARA resources here.

Black History Month Lesson Plans from The Civics Renewal Network

We here at FJCC/LFI are proud members of the Civics Renewal Network. Our friends there have a FANTASTIC and easy to use searchable database of resources, and of course you can find Black History Month resources there as well, including a curated collection from Share My Lesson.

Be sure to take advantage of the search feature to find some excellent resources that you can use.

Check out the Civics Renewal Network here.

Black History Month Lessons, from iCivics

If you teach civics, you are likely pretty familiar with the resources from iCivics. Naturally, they have an excellent collection of resources for this month.

You can search the iCivics collection here.

Black History Month, from various federal agencies!

What a fantastic collaboration!

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.

A variety of US federal agencies and museums have collaborated on providing a collection of resources for teaching black history, and it is definitely worth a look!

You can find this great collection here.

Black History Month, from the Center for Civic Education

If you teach civics, you are probably familiar too with the great stuff from the Center for Civic Education. I am a big fan of their 60 Second Civics series, personally. Well, they have also compiled a variety of great resources for Black History Month.

Be sure to check out their great stuff here.

Obviously these are just a few of the excellent resources that you can use to teach during Black History Month, and if you are in Florida, be sure to check out what is available on CPALMS. But it’s important to remember that Black history is American history, and these sorts of resources should be integrated into your instruction throughout the course of the year!