Andrews – With the recent election, many citizens on either side of the political spectrum are concerned about their voices being heard. One local teacher is taking steps to show their students just how to communicate and voice concerns to government representatives.
Reagan Lindsay teaches world history, civic literacy and philosophy at Andrews High School. Lindsay said he became dissatisfied with the impersonal nature of the coursework.
“I wanted a project that would actually resonate with students,” he said.
So, Lindsay created a multi-stage project to give students a real-world understanding of the content they were being taught.
- In the first step, students had to identify an issue in the community, state or nation that they wanted to see solved.
- In the second step, students had to research and investigate their issue.
- In the third step, students had to identify the most appropriate legislator to address their issue as well as their track record on the issue and related committee assignments.
- The fourth step challenged students to develop their own solution proposal for their identified issue.
- The final step required students to compile all of this information into a formal letter to send to the identified representative.
The student’s letters were mailed out on Dec. 4, and Lindsay hopes they will receive responses soon. He would like to implement this project earlier in the future so students could potentially receive responses while still in his course.
Lindsay wanted to demonstrate to students the most effective avenue for political and social change.
“My students deserve to fully understand the weight of their opinion as soon-to-be voters in voicing their opinion to their representative. Just because they weren’t able to vote yet doesn’t mean that they aren’t owed representation,” he said.
When explaining this goal to students, Lindsay phrased it as “their constitutionally protected right to harass politicians until a problem is solved or exercising their right to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” He said this was the most engaged he has seen his students, as this project gave them the opportunity to research a topic, they were truly invested in.
Cherokee County Schools has made changes regarding final exams for non-state-tested subjects. This has given teachers of these subjects more agency when determining the final project or exam for their courses.
Lindsay wants to use this project to springboard the final project. He plans to have students create new political parties and develop the elements for their own political campaigns.
“I hope that these projects lead to my students, in this class and future, to run for office and inject fresh, youthful ideas into our democracy,” Lindsay said.