Carolina Public Press – When Southeast Middle School social studies teacher Eric Shock’s eighth-graders walked into class one day last semester, they noticed a piece of paper on the board. It was a bill being considered by the North Carolina General Assembly that would ban cellphones in schools.
His students weren’t happy.
“Of course, all the kids are like, ‘No, we need to have cellphones,’” Shock recalled.
So, he gave them the email addresses of the representatives behind the proposed legislation. If students wanted to share their opposition to the ban, they could reach out directly. They’d get class credit for civic engagement, and just maybe, have their input considered by state leaders.
While the students’ lobbying effort ultimately failed — Gov. Josh Stein signed the cellphone ban into law last month — Shock considered it an educational success. Now, his Rowan County eighth-graders knew how their government worked, and how they could use their voice within it.
A few years ago in Vance County, Clarke Elementary School social studies teacher Nicole Clarke wanted to spice up what she saw as an unexciting curriculum.
So one day, she invited Henderson’s mayor, city council and the school district superintendent to the school for Resource Day. Her third graders got the chance to talk to their local leaders, and the now-fifth graders still talk about the experience to this day, she said.
When North Carolina Association of Educators Vice President Bryan Proffitt taught social studies, he started one class by playing a breakup song. He then asked students to write about a time when they ended some kind of relationship, why they made that choice, how the person responded and what the consequences were.
Then, he pulled up the Declaration of Independence. After all, it’s just a breakup letter, Proffitt said.
“What I often hear from students is that civics is interesting when it connects to their lives,” said Wake Forest University School of Medicine researcher Parissa Ballard. “Civics can feel far away, but it actually isn’t. I’ve seen many talented civics teachers who find ways to connect students’ interests and concerns to historical and modern politics.”
Shock, Clarke and Proffitt may count themselves among those teachers. But the problem is, for many of North Carolina’s students, civics class isn’t interesting. It’s not interactive, and it doesn’t effectively motivate them to be informed, engaged citizens.
It doesn’t have to be this way. With intentional policymaker investment, school support and teacher effort, civic education can be a powerful tool for building the next generation of active citizens.
To learn civics, you have to do it.
That’s the theory behind action civics, an approach to civics class that has students identify a community issue they care about while teachers guide them toward the information and public officials they need to devise and implement a public policy solution, Ballard said.
Ballard and her team are conducting research into action civics. They hypothesize that action civics will promote civic engagement, like students taking action in their community, having more civic discussions and feeling a greater sense of belonging.
In Tennessee, action civics is already producing results. In 2012, the state legislature passed a law requiring students to pass a project-based civic assessment once in grades 4-8 and another time in high school.
Cleveland Middle School eighth-grade social studies teacher Ed Fickley has been involved with the Tennessee Center for Civic Learning and Engagement for about 20 years. He’s seen the impact of action civics firsthand.
“The more engaged they are in something, the more hands on they are with something, they’re going to learn and integrate more deeply,” he said.
In recent years, Fickley’s district piloted a Project Citizen program, which requires students to identify a public policy issue in their community, research potential solutions, find who in government is responsible for that issue and present proposals in front of elected officials.
The program also includes a media literacy component to teach students how to distinguish between facts and opinions.
According to Georgetown University research, students who participated in Project Citizen not only demonstrated significantly higher civic knowledge than their peers who took a traditional civics class, but developed a stronger civic disposition — high-schoolers were more inclined to stay informed about government and politics, commit to voting, trust in government and media and feel capable of organizing people to solve a community problem.
A curriculum used by many schools across the U.S., including Tennessee and Indiana, also resulted in stronger civic habits, according to Georgetown research.
The We The People curriculum goes over the founding of the United States, and culminates in a simulated legislative hearing over an academic question. For example, one Indiana middle school class asked why the founding fathers thought that freedom of speech was important, and whether they believed there are times where freedom of speech can be limited, said Tim Kalgreen, director of civic education at the Indiana Bar Association.
In addition to the We the People curriculum, Indiana passed a law in 2021 requiring a standalone middle school civics course, Kalgreen said.
“It’s catching students younger,” he said. “It’s getting them interested younger. It’s making sure that they get the knowledge younger, which allows their teachers, as they get later into their education, to really build on stronger concepts, or more in depth concepts, more nuanced concepts.”
When Independent High School junior and student advisory council member April Alonso of Mecklenburg County spoke to North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green a few months ago, he talked about bringing project-based civics to the state.
It could be volunteering or public speaking or a voter registration drive — anything that gets students actually engaging in their community, Alonso said.
Green’s recently released 2025-2030 strategic plan at least pays lip service to this goal. It states a goal of increasing the number of schools implementing “high-quality character, service-learning and civic programs that reinforce durable skills.”
