Florida Joint Center for Citizenship Website Relaunch!

Posted on August 26, 2015 by stevemasy

Friends in Civics here and Florida and across the country, I just want to take a moment and let you know that the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship has just relaunched its website! We have attempted to make it easier to navigate, more user friendly, and more flexible on the back end in adding features and tools. So what are the most important new features?

Registration Changes

One of the first things that you will notice when you arrive at the site and attempt to access the resources is that you will be required to log in and create/update your profile (if you have logged in in the past) or to create a new log in/registration (if this is a first visit or you want to use a different email). You will notice a couple of additions to the profile page. The most important addition is the request for your FLDOE number.

Now, the FLDOE number IS optional, so why are we asking for it? Well, it has become incumbent upon us to be able to illustrate whether or not the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship is having an impact on student achievement across the state. To do so, we need to be able to connect EOC scores stored by the Education Data Warehouse to our work. By providing your FLDOE number, this makes that data effort so much easier. Your data will NEVER be shared with anyone. We thank you for your help on this.
Once you have completed your profile, you will be able to access all of the resources you need! And for those that have used our site in the past, the system shouldn’t constantly log you out every time you change pages. If you DO wish to log out (but why?), simply click on your name and then press the log out button on the profile page. If you have problems registering on the site, please send me an email!

Civics in a Snap Lessons

Civics in a Snap! For when you have just enough time to help your kids learn about being good citizens!

The Civics in a Snap lessons are aimed at K-5 classrooms, and provide 15-20 minute lessons centered around the elementary civics benchmarks. For more, take a look at this overview I shared earlier. You can actually preview the lesson before downloading it, which is something that we also hope to do with the 7th grade curriculum soon!

Professional Development Calendar

The FJCC Professional Development Calendar is where you can follow along on our adventures across the state as we work with teachers, schools, and districts to create the best citizens we can for the state. We will also be providing the resources that we used at the specific PD session on this page, though that may not always be available. Finally, we will be putting up a downloadable ‘PD request’ form that will make it easier to plan who wants what where! :)

The Blog

In the future (once we work out the kinks, as with the dates and the layout), the blog will be transitioning to the main website, and you will be able to see the most recent posts right there on the front page of the site! For now, we will continue to post in both places.

Future Developments

As I mentioned, we do have plans to continue revising and improving the website. We are looking at adding some sort of discussion forum, improved feedback options, 7th grade lesson plan previews, greater digital interactivity options, and more. We are open to ideas and suggestions as well! And a big THANK YOU to our own Mike Barnhardt, for his work on the site!!!!

A New Civics-Related Course in Manatee County

Posted on August 26, 2015 by stevemasy

This came across my desk recently from the NCSS Smartbrief. It seems that Manatee County has established a new course they are calling ‘Know the Law’. This course will be for 7th grade (and some 9th grade) students, and as such, it will overlap with the Civics course that most students in 7th grade take in Florida. The course is intended to The “teach students to understand their rights when it comes to the law and the consequences for violating it.”

Mainly, the class focuses on the consequences students will face if they break the law. Offenses include doing drugs, committing a violent offense or throwing house parties with alcohol.

“It’s going to focus on how it will affect them and their future if they do drugs or commit other crimes,” Bristow said. “Because a lot of them don’t think of the consequences to their futures.”

The lesson has a large section on future consequences, which details how having a criminal record can affect a student’s chances to participate in the military, attend certain colleges and work in certain jobs.

The lesson also explains when a juvenile can be charged as an adult for certain crimes, the differences between misdemeanors and felonies and what constitutes sexual battery/rape.

I’ve been looking around for the course curriculum and haven’t found it yet. I would love to see just how it approaches some of these issues, and how in depth it gets into helping students understand their rights as well as their responsibilities. Is it just primarily focused on consequences? Or does it actually get into things like civil liberties and rights?
I also find it interesting that this course will be taught through the civics course. Without a doubt, the civics course could lend itself well to this sort of thing, as long as it is integrated smoothly. But that is the question, isn’t it? The civics course itself, you will recall, has an EOC attached to it, so when and how will teachers include THIS curriculum without impeding instruction in the general civics course? If anyone knows any more about this, we would love to hear from you!

You can read the whole article that discusses this course at the Bradenton Herald.

Teaching Civics in the Sunshine State

Posted on August 25, 2015 by stevemasy

Another link for you as we head into the new school year. Recently, Dr. Elizabeth Washington (director of the social studies Proteach program at UF and Senior Fellow here at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship) and I had the chance to sit down with Dr. Emma Humphries of iCivics and the Bob Graham Center to discuss teaching civics in the Sunshine State. For me, two big things to remember: civics is NOT history and should not be taught as such, and always always always use the Civics Benchmarks Item Specifications in your planning, teaching, and assessment! Also, I need to lose weight.

I enjoyed the opportunity to sit down with Emma and Elizabeth and just talk civics, and I hope that you find some of what you see and hear in the video useful. Feel free to address any questions or comments my way!

Welcome Back! Resources for Civics Teachers

Posted on August 24, 2015 by stevemasy

As we go into the new school year, I just want to take a few minutes and welcome folks back, and to welcome those that might be new to teaching civics here in Florida. This post will share with you some of the resources that are available for teaching civics in this state. Some of these might help those of you teaching civics and social studies in other states as well. An overview of some excellent primary sources for social studies and civics education is also available! Certainly, this is only a very small list; throughout the year, we will continue sharing new resources, spotlighting excellent resources, and discussing ways in which they may be used in your classroom.

The Florida Joint Center for Citizenship
For obvious reasons, we start with the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship. As an organization, the FJCC offers free resources and professional development to teachers, schools, and districts, centered around civic education. Most recently, we worked in collaboration with Miami-Dade county teachers to create elementary civics lessons (‘Civics in a Snap’), which will be shared with you as soon as our NEW site goes live later this week! Our most accessed resource, the 7th grade Applied Civics Resources, provides lesson plans, content background videos, benchmark specifications, and assessment items that teachers can use to teach the benchmarks. Please note that in order to access most resources on the site, a free registration is required.

iCivics

iCivics is perhaps one of the most well known and loved civics resources in the nation. The site provides games, writing tools such as Drafting Board, lesson plans, and other resources for teachers to better teach that next generation of citizens. The FJCC has worked closely with iCivics in developing resources aligned with the Florida Benchmarks, which we have integrated into our lesson plans, though their curriculum and resources are intended for a national audience. Free registration is required, but it is well with your time, and I have never known a teacher to say a negative word about iCivics. Just be sure that you make sure whatever resource you are using fits your state’s standards! Here in Florida, folks from the Florida Law Related Education Association lead the iCivics effort across the state, and are themselves worth a look.

The Center for Civic Education
The Center for Civic Education is perhaps one of the most well known and important national civic education organizations. Their ‘We the People’ and ‘Project Citizen‘ materials are incredibly popular, and they do an excellent job in helping students understand the foundations of citizenship and to start them on the path toward civic engagement.

The United States Youth Senate Program
The United States Youth Senate Program is a unique educational experience for outstanding high school students interested in pursuing careers in public service. The 54th annual program will be held in Washington, D.C., from March 5 – 12, 2016. Two student leaders from each state, the District of Columbia and the Department of Defense Education Activity will spend a week in Washington experiencing their national government in action. Student delegates will hear major policy addresses by Senators, cabinet members, officials from the Departments of State and Defense and directors of other federal agencies, as well as participate in a meeting with a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. All transportation, hotel and meal expenses will be provided by The Hearst Foundations. In addition, each delegate will also be awarded a $5,000 College Scholarship for undergraduate studies, with encouragement to pursue coursework in history and political science.To apply, please contact your state selection contact. Here in Florida, the contact is Annette Boyd-Pitts of FLREA.

The Ashbrook Center
The Ashbrook Center is an excellent resource for both primary sources and teacher professional development. Perhaps more well known for the materials it provides through TeachingAmericanHistory.Org, Ashbrook has some nice resources for civic education as well, and their seminars on aspects of American government, civics, and history are excellent. I had the opportunity to attend one myself, and it was very well done, though reading-intensive. They are expanding more into Florida. Please keep an eye on this blog for information on upcoming seminar opportunities with Ashbrook.

The Bill of Rights Institute
Putting aside, for now at least, the somewhat controversial background of the Bill of Rights Institute , the resources provided by the BORI are worth taking a look at, especially the primary sources that are provided.

The National Archives and the Library of Congress
The National Archives and the Library of Congress have a wonderful collection of resources that any and every social studies and civics teacher should want to use. We have written about the new mobile app before, and the FJCC has worked closely with the National Archives in providing professional development to teachers at all levels of education.

Mock Elections

The FJCC/Lou Frey Institute Student Voting Election Simulation, while aligned with Florida’s Civic Benchmarks SS.7.C.2.9 and SS.7.C.2.7, can be used by anyone in any state as a way to have students engage in the process of voting. It is easy to use and pretty flexible in how you choose to use it. Registration IS required, but is as always free.

Civics Tutorials

This Civics Tutorial site is aligned with the Florida Civics Benchmarks, and provides some excellent guided tutorial pieces for students to use within a flipped classroom model, as a remediation tool, or in preparation for 7th grade Civics EOC. An overview of the site can be found here.

Escambia Civics Review Site

The Escambia Civics Review site is just what the name implies: a review site intended to prepare students for success on Florida’s Civics EOCA. However, it contains additional resources that can be used throughout the year. These resources include vocabulary games, connections to Discovery Ed (if you have an account with that specific resource), assessment items, a practice test, and, most significantly, student friendly readings. These readings are about a page long and are intended to be used by teachers to supplement instruction in the benchmarks. They have been rewritten recently to ensure consistency in the vocabulary and that all of the readings are appropriate for middle school students!

The C3 Framework
The C3 Framework is a relatively new resource provided by the National Council for the Social Studies (and you should be a member; talk about resources!). It’s Four Dimensions lend themselves well to civics, especially the focus on asking questions and taking action. An overview of the C3 can be found here, and I encourage you to check it out, even if your state is not using it.

Florida Civic Health
The Lou Frey Institute’s Florida Civic Health site allows you to compare Florida to every other state in a number of measures of civic health. While it is obviously using Florida as a starting point, you CAN use it to compare your own state to Florida, or to compare metropolitan areas within the state of Florida. Simply select your state on the map, as you see in the screenshot below.

Countable

Countable is a FANTASTIC new resource for teachers in social studies, and especially civics. It would be an injustice to summarize it in just a few words, so please take a look at the post we did on it here, or simply visit it yourself to explore it! The current topic for discussion? Birthright citizenship. Check it out!

The Civil Debate Wall
From the site: The Bob Graham Center’s Civil Debate Wall is a unique, innovative social media tool created by Local Projects for The Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida and funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation. The Wall creates constructive dialogue by providing a physical social media tool that connects large touch screens, a texting system, and a website. These three synchronized components create a single, seamless interactive experience for the broader University of Florida community to actively engage in local, national and international issues. The website component of the Wall closely mirrors the physical Wall. The website attracts users who are not physically on campus. Providing the same features, the website gathers users from a broader population and allows users to keep track of debates.

These are just a few of the resources that are available for civic education in Florida and across the nation. If you have additional ones, please feel free to share them with me at stephen.masyada@ucf.edu, or leave a comment on this post. Please do the same if you would like professional development or any other help or support! Don’t forget to take a look at the overview of primary resource tools here, and be sure to check out the Florida Civics Teacher’s Facebook Page and the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship Facebook Page! Good luck in the new year, and thank you for the work that you do!

Justifying Our Existence: Does Our Work Matter?

Posted on July 30, 2015 by stevemasy

As readers of this blog and supporters of the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship are no doubt aware, the past few months here at the FJCC/Lou Frey Institute have been a bit stressful. The Florida Legislature seems to have essentially decided that the state should not be in the business of funding professional development organizations, tools, or resources, and that anything of value can and should be paid for by the districts.

“It’s only valuable if it doesn’t cost anything, is the message,” Gaetz told the Times/Herald. “If yours is so valuable, why isn’t anybody interested in paying any money for it?”

While our own funding was saved at the last minute, thanks no doubt to the efforts of folks like you, we remain in a precarious position. In order to continue to be supported by the state, and not have to charge districts a great deal of money to support us, we have to start providing data to the legislature and to the governor’s office. Now, we do have some excellent data that we have provided them before. We know, for example, that usage of both our own site and the Escambia civics site, for which we provide a great deal of resources and support, is incredibly high. Figure 1 illustrates usage of the FJCC online resources. Figure 3 illustrates usage of the Escambia site. (Click on each image to enlarge it if you need to).

The usage of these resources is also spread across the state, as the two figures below illustrate:

So what does the data we have say?

More than 5,600 Florida teachers and district personnel, from every district in the state, maintain active accounts on the Institute’s website, providing them with access to professional development, instructional and assessment resources.

In FY 2014-15 to-date, more than 59,000 users of the Institute’s civics resources website have generated more than 170,000 work sessions as teachers have come to the site for support materials (Figure 1).
- Monthly utilization rates have grown exponentially in FY 2014-15 following the first administration of the Civics EOC in the spring of 2014. Further growth is anticipated in advance of the 2015 test administration date.

The Institute’s daily impact on teachers touches virtually all Florida school districts. Figure 2 shows the distribution of usage sessions by school districts to-date for the current fiscal year. Heaviest use is from the state’s more urban districts.
- Four of the state’s most rural districts are not making use of LFI/FJCC resources. We are currently coordinating with FLDOE’s outreach to lowest performing districts to address this issue.

In the five month period from September, 2014 through January, 2015, almost 40,000 student users accessed materials on the Civics Review Site in just under 120,000 sessions. (Figure 3). The general trend line is up and student access is expected to grow further in advance of the 2015 EOC administration.
The Student Review Site is serving the needs of students from virtually every district in the state (Figure 4). Use is most intense in the more urban areas of the state.
- Five of the most rural districts are not making use of the Student Review Sites. LFI/FJCC is currently coordinating with FLDOE’s outreach to lowest performing districts to address this issue.

This is good data, data that we are excited by and that we believe is making a difference. Civics scores increased this year, and we believe that we may have played a role in that increase. HOWEVER, the data that we have is not data that will impress the state legislature and the governor’s office. We need to directly connect our work to student EOC achievement scores, and in this we face a challenge. The state leadership does not want stories, though we have so many good stories that we can share and will share. They want hard numbers, or the stories that we do have will be nothing more than melancholy reminiscing. It is difficult, however. How do we separate out the noise that is inherent in this sort of data collection effort? After all, we are not the only civic education organization in Florida, nor are we the only resource that is being used. At the same time, we don’t always know just HOW the resources and PD we provided is being implemented in classrooms, schools, and districts. And, of course, the biggest problem we face is actually getting those numbers that we need. We must, essentially, be able to match student test scores to specific teachers, and that requires a great deal of finesse with the system. Most significantly, we must rely on the Education Data Warehouse to share with us this data, and that can sometimes be difficult. We must also convince teachers to allow us to match them up with those student scores. If we are unable to do this, well, despite the good work that we believe that we do, the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship will most likely cease to exist.

Of course we recognize the need to demonstrate our impact; it’s getting access to the data that we need in order to do this that is the difficult process, and it is a bit of a frustration that the impressive usage data is not adequate for the task. To facilitate this effort, as we relaunch a revised version of our website in the fall, we are going to ask that all users re-register on the site, and we humbly request that you provide us with enough registration data so that we may match users to scores. Please keep in mind that we will not be publishing individual scores or personally and publicly identifying teachers and scores; rather, this will simply be for justifying our continued existence to the legislature and the governor (assuming, of course, that the data is positive, which we believe it will be).

We believe, deeply, in the mission of the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship. We believe that the work that we do here does help teachers, schools, and districts in helping to develop that next generation of Florida, American, and global citizens. We hope that we may be allowed to continue that work, and that you might be willing to help us do so. We thank you for the support that you have provided in the past and in any support you choose to offer, and for your understanding as we work to collect the data that we so desperately need.

For now, if you have used our resources or attended our PDs, we would love for you to complete this survey that may help us.

Compromise in Civic Life and Civic Education

Posted on July 23, 2015 by stevemasy

Some have suggested that we are at a point in American civic life where citizens have never been more divided by partisanship, more offended (and eager to offend), and more angry. Our elections and our leadership seem to be increasingly partisan, combative and aggressive. Others point out that in fact we are not as divided as we think overall; while the two major parties themselves have clear differences, the electorate itself actually agrees on a larger number of issues than they think. Indeed, can the politics of today be any worse than the Election of 1800?

One thing that the current climate HAS brought us, despite the fact that we actually have more in common than we think, is the idea that ‘compromise‘ is a dirty word. As Deborah Tannen points out, many of our early leaders, the ones we find in our textbooks and give nicknames to, the ones that we valorize and heroify, would not recognize this idea when it comes to issues concerning the survival and success of the United States. Henry Clay, I think, says it best (p. 382):

I go for compromise whenever it can be made. All legislation, all government, all society is formed on the principle of mutual politeness, comity, courtesy; upon these everything is based. I bow to you today because you bow to me. You are respectful to me because I am respectful to you. Compromises have their recommendation that if you concede anything you have something conceded to you in return. Let him who elevates himself humanity above its weaknesses, its infirmities, its wants, its necessities say if he pleases I will never compromise, but let no who is not above the frailties of our common nature disdain compromise.

We must recognize, of course, that these many early compromises were intended to overcome America’s shameful, bloody original sin, but it does not negate the fact that compromise with your political opponents, your ideological foes, and even your theoretical allies may sometimes be necessary to make progress, no matter how incremental. As Unger (1998, p. 263) writes, when we pursue social and political change that can significantly impact who we are, how we live, and how we govern ourselves,

It is a mistake, for example, to oppose short-term and context-oriented proposals to the tentative exploration of long-term alternative futures, or moderation to radicalism, in programmatic thought. Any trajectory of cumulative structural change can be considered at points close to present social reality or distant from it. The direction matters more than the distance.

Any civic education that seeks to ensure an active and engaged citizenry, one willing to engage in deliberation rather than accusation, should work toward ensuring future citizens understand the importance that compromise MUST play in civic life. Here in Florida, we have fashioned our middle school civics course in such a way that students may develop that understanding. A number of civics benchmarks provide opportunities for a consideration of compromise in civic and political life. 7.C.1.8, for example, has students look at the arguments between Federalists and Anti-Federalists concerning the writing of the Constitution and the development of the Bill of Rights as a sort of ‘compromise’ document. 7.C.2.5 has these future citizens look at the Bill of Rights as a balance between liberty and security, between my rights and your rights. This itself is a form of compromise. 7.C.2.12, my favorite benchmark, has students “Develop a plan to resolve a state or local problem by researching public policy alternatives, identifying appropriate government agencies to address the issue, and determining a course of action.” A very C3 approach, don’t you think, especially as it has them researching and taking action? And in the process of researching and developing solutions…compromise would play a role. 7.C.2.13 goes well with 2.12 in having students consider alternative perspectives, another area where they must think about how those with disparate views might reach an accommodation. Even 7.3.C.4, which connects to a discussion of federalism, could invoke compromise. The concept of compromise, then, is almost baked into the benchmarks that we teach in Florida, though of course we must be sure that how we approach it aligns with the state item specifications and benchmark clarifications. Ultimately, we must realize that without compromise, we face some stark consequences. To borrow from Auden, ‘we must all love each other…’

Good News for Civic Education in Florida!

Posted on July 16, 2015 by stevemasy

Putting aside the question of whether Florida’s middle school civics benchmarks and related assessment are actually an appropriate measures of civic learning, some good news here in the Sunshine State concerning the past administration of the Civics EOCA. As you probably know, Florida is currently one of the few states with a somewhat high stakes test connected to civics. This test, while selected response, is crafted using Webb’s Depths of Knowledge as a guide, and students are given multiple choice questions that range from level 1 to level 3 on the cognitive complexity scale. The most recent scoring of the assessment revealed some positive growth on the part of students in Florida, and I am hopeful that this is a sign that civic education could make an impact long term. Let’s take a look at the positives:

Civics EOC Assessment By Achievement Level

This is good news! While one would hope for a greater number of level fours, any growth in the number of students scoring at level 3 can only be a good thing.

Achievement Level by Demographic Background

These numbers, again, are a positive. I am most excited by the growth in African American scores. For the first time, half of all African American students taking the assessment scored at least a 3, a jump of 7 percentage points. On the downside, only half of all African-American students scored at least a 3. This needs to change, and we need to figure out how to do it.

Growth in Achievement Level 4, by Demographic Background

Again, we see growth, but it is simply too low. Yes, great that more students scored higher on an equivalent test, but frustrating that so few are scoring at a high level. How do we change this?

Overall, much positive news. I encourage you to take a look at some of the other data in the report, including how your county might have done overall compared to other counties and to last year. One of the projects involving the Partnership for Civic Learning involves looking at what some of these schools and districts that exceed expectations are doing right. Can what they are doing be duplicated across the state? It is an important question to consider. For now, let’s enjoy the good news, review the data, and see how what we are doing might be impacting civic education in Florida.

New FJCC Resource for Florida Elementary Civics!

Posted on July 9, 2015 by stevemasy

Friends in civics, I mentioned previously that I had spent a week in Miami last month, prior to my two weeks in Boston, working with our Val McVey and teachers and staff from Miami Dade schools. This work involved creating curricular materials for third through fifth grade that are aligned with the grade level Civics and Florida Standards for ELA. While we already have entire extended lessons for these, the new materials are actually intended to be 15 to 20 minute mini-lessons that we believe effectively get to the civics benchmarks without requiring a significant investment of time. Elementary social studies is the curricular equivalent of the Ottoman Empire in 1914: it exists, everybody likes to pretend it matters, but no one wants anything to really do with it until they absolutely have to. I’ve discussed this briefly before:

We know that both nationally and in Florida, social studies education is often lacking at the elementary level. This is NOT a new thing; generally speaking, social studies has been on the decline for decades, especially at the elementary level. The reasons for this are many and varied, but one can assume, rightly I think, that a decline in general social studies instruction could also result in a decline in civics instruction in the elementary grades.

The most pressing problem for elementary teachers is, most often, time. In our observations, and in the research, we just don’t see hard-pressed elementary teachers finding the time to do extensive work with social studies in general and civics in particular. To address this, we teamed with folks from Miami, with the support of their fantastic Social Studies director, Bob Brazofsky. The result of this partnership is our new collection of mini-lessons for elementary teachers, which we have termed

Civics in a Snap! For when you have just enough time to help your kids learn about being good citizens!

These mini-lessons will be shared with you once we get our new website up and running this fall. Miami-Dade is in the process of integrating them into their planning guides, and we will be hosting them on a new section of our website devoted to elementary civics. For now, I am sharing with you a sample of that work, in this case, the Civics in a Snap lesson for SS.3.C.2.1:Identify group and individual actions of citizens that demonstrate
civility, cooperation, volunteerism, and other civic virtues. Click on the images to embiggen them (embiggen is, of course, a perfectly cromulent word)!

If you have questions about these new resources, feel free to shoot me an email! We are so excited about what we hope will be a useful, and used, civics resource for elementary teachers!

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Category Archives: Teaching the Benchmarks