Matching Public Achievement to school standards

The post below was written by Santi Bromley, a 5th grade teacher at Andersen United Community School in Minneapolis, Minn., and an experienced Public Achievement coach and site coordinator. Bromley shares her own experience matching academic standards to skills developed in Public Achievement, and one of the tools she uses to evaluate student progress. These tips should be especially valuable to site coordinators at new Public Achievement sites in public schools around the country.

Making the case for Public Achievement as a valuable learning tool

Fourteen years ago, I went through the main subject areas that I thought Public Achievement would hit hard upon and then specifically listed out matching school standards for Minneapolis Public Schools. Our district now uses new Minnesota standards, which are closely tied to our state tests, but for literacy in intermediate grades we will be referring to core (national standards) over the next few years.

Return to citizen voters

“We need to rise to the occasion of citizenship,” writes Harry Boyte on the American Democracy Project blog today, citing the “elephant in the room” at President Obama’s televised Town Hall meeting Monday night where voters expressed disappointment and said that they are waiting for the administration to fix many of the problems confronting middle class Americans.

“People didn’t vote for a man who said he was going to change things,” writes Boyte. “The country elected a president whose message was ‘yes we can.'”  This is the same message as that of the Preamble to the Constitution, Boyte continues, which doesn’t say that the president–or government–will solve our problems.

One strategy for reclaiming our role as “we the people” is working with students faculty, and staff of colleges and universities to join with libraries, community groups, and others to do work to address community challenges. This is at the heart of the Civic Agency Institute–led for the past three years by the American Democracy Project and Center for Democracy and Citizenship–which will bring representatives from more than a dozen campuses together at a meeting this November for training and strategizing.

Beyond expert cults and know-nothing reactions

This post was written by Harry C. Boyte, founder and co-director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship.

In his article for the Sept. 13 issue of Time magazine, the well known and highly respected political commentator Joe Klein calls for new forms of deliberative democracy. He cites the example of Zeguo, a rural district in China which has used deliberative polling to set budget priorities—an approach similar to an ancient Greek process in which randomly chosen citizens were delegated to make major decisions on behalf of the political community. “By most accounts it has succeeded brilliantly,” Klein observes.

In Democracy and Knowledge the classical scholar Josiah Ober contrasted classical Athens with modern day America. Athens had many methods of aggregating expert and amateur knowledge while “contemporary practice,” Ober observes, “often treats free citizens as passive subjects by discounting the value of what they know…Willful ignorance is practiced by the parties of the right and left alike.”

Constitution Day

“On this day 223 years ago, the signers of the U.S. Constitution changed the course of history,” write Harry Boyte and Patrick Corvington in an editorial in today’s Pioneer Press. The Constitution, they continue, defined the conditions for a bold experiment in democracy: government as an instrument for accomplishing shared purposes, and citizens who see themselves as co-creators of a shared civic life.

Most would agree that this vision of democracy takes continual work. It’s not an ideal we can strive for and then, once achieved, celebrate with relief and self-congratulation.

But the Corporation for National and Community Service, headed by Corvington, and the National Conference on Citizenship have developed measures that tell us something about the health of our democracy. Their new federal report, Civic Life in America: Key Findings on the Civic Health of the Nation shows that Americans remain deeply committed to the principles of citizenship in ways big and small, formal and informal.

The National Conference on Citizenship is also working with partners in 13 states and 4 cities to produce local civic health reports this fall.

Did you know…

that today is the International Day of Democracy?

Five years ago at the United Nations World Summit, world leaders agreed that democracy, development and human rights are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.

To help stanch backsliding on the hard-won gains in democratic governance since that summit, the United Nations created the International Day of Democracy to hold leaders accountable and focus the attention of the global community.

“Let us recognize that democratic governance is a yearning shared and voiced by people the world over,” says U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “Democracy is a goal in its own right, and an indispensable means for achieving development for all humankind.”

Democracy colleges

This post was written by Harry Boyte, founder and co-director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augsburg College.

Looking for inspiration and edification? A new book is just to the point.

Over the years I have interviewed many faculty, staff, and students in colleges and universities about their work, their aspirations, and their experiences. What has struck me most is the poignancy of the narrative of  enclosure, recalling the tragic story of the privatization of pastures, fields, and forests that prompted enormous streams of migration to America.

In parallel ways, the culture of higher education over the years has become more and more enclosed. When Ed Fogelman and I did interviews with more than 30 senior faculty at the University of Minnesota in 1997-98, what struck us most was the narrative of detachment and isolation.

“I communicate with the 40 people in my subdiscipline by Internet far more than the people in the offices on my floor,” said one political scientist. “We went into literature because we wanted to be engaged in the human drama,” said a department chair, but “we’re shut off from the urban scene all around us” (see “Public Engagement in a Civic Mission”).

A powerful antidote to isolation and enclosure in higher education has just been published. Scott Peters, formerly a researcher with the Center for Democracy and Citizenship, is largely responsible for rediscovering the vibrant traditions and practices of public work in land grant colleges and universities that created strong institutional identities as “democracy colleges.”

In his new book, Democracy and Higher Education: Traditions and Stories of Civic Engagement, Peters brings these traditions to life in a treatment of what he calls the “prophetic counter narrative” of education as a force for democracy. And he combines a wonderful intellectual and historical treatment of this tradition with stories of modern scholars who continue the public work tradition developing sustained, reciprocal, messy, but often profoundly generative partnerships with communities.

Moderation, civility and bipartisanship are not the same

Words matter, not least in the realm of politics where their use (manipulation?) can have powerful consequences. In his blog today, Peter Levine uses examples from contemporary American public affairs to underscore important differences between “moderation,” “civility,” and “bipartisanship.”

A call to student leaders across the nation

Yasmin Kariminian, a student at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), believes that participation in student government could be a stepping stone to a world where individuals see themselves and others as creators of their own communities.

At UMBC, Kariminian and other student leaders have transformed student government into a vital body that “work[s] with our fellow students instead of simply for them,” and that has changed the perception of students from “misbehaved children” into “legitimate contribtors to our campus community and culture.”

Kariminian credits use of community organizing techniques such as one-to-one relationship building and public evaluation—along with a new emphasis on the civic agency of students—in helping change the culture of UMBC’s student government over the past few years.

Her recent post on the American Democracy Project blog is an abbreviated version of the story, she writes, but she is sure that “now is the time for student leaders to re-envision the function and the ways of student governments across the nation.”

Read an earlier post about Yasmin Kariminian and her work at UMBC.

Bonner Leader takes the lead

My name is Mallory Carstens and I am a junior majoring in social work at Augsburg College.

Mallory Carstens

I have also been involved in the Bonner Leaders Program for two years. Near the end of my sophomore year I decided I wanted a summer job that would be meaningful and allow me to really feel connected to my previous work in the community. With the Bonner program director I created a summer opportunity to work at the Baker Center in the West Side neighborhood of St. Paul.

My efforts this summer have been focused on transforming Baker Center into a growing, vibrant community center. To begin, I took on a role in everything that was already happening at Baker including All Around the Neighborhood summer camp, Jane Addams School for Democracy, and the Youth Apprenticeship Project. From there, my responsibilities grew and developed into starting new initiatives.

I joined the Baker Advisory Council and used ideas from the meetings to make things happen. I helped start a preschool time for toddlers and families, a free clothing exchange for mothers and children, and computer classes for Spanish speakers. I also worked with neighborhood residents to keep the swimming pool at Cherokee Heights Elementary School–next door to Baker Center–open to students and the community.

My work at Baker this summer has taught me how to listen to the needs of the community. Being involved with children, parents, community members, and neighborhood organizations has helped me develop a sense of why my work matters. I have come to realize how important a resource like the Baker Center is to the West Side.  I have strengthened my organizational and communication skills working with children and families, and have even gotten the chance to practice my Spanish! As I continue into my third year as a Bonner Leader and social work student, I hope to carry with me the importance of community.

Innovations in Public Achievement at Georgia university

The post below was written by Gregg Kaufman, an instructor at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Ga. Kaufman is a participant in the Civic Agency Initiative, a partnership between the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the Center for Democracy and Citizenship to produce a series of national models for developing civic agency among undergraduates and to disseminate those models broadly throughout American higher education. The GCSU eGuide to Public Achievement, developed by Kaufman this summer, documents the first year of Public Achievement at GCSU and includes resources such as a map of student learning outcomes.

The Georgia College second full year of Public Achievement is off and running with special topics courses entitled Public Achievement I and II. We are taking the unusual pedagogical plunge of scheduling six community field trips at the beginning of the semester to gather community knowledge. We will take the Milledgeville Visitors’ Bureau “Trolley Tour,” and two days later we’ve arranged for a veteran basketball coach and member of Milledgeville’s 100 Black Men to give us an “alternative tour.” We will also visit the hospital ER, courthouse, and the elementary school where the second semester Public Achievement work will take place.

My co-instructor Jan Clark and I have also created a list of public meetings that the students will use to choose several forays into public deliberation – school board, city council, county commission, etc.

For Public Achievement I, the class will function as a PA group with the two professors as the coaches. We will cover content and discussions with PA group work on alternating days.

Our students will move into coaching in January with 50 5^th grader students at Blandy Hills Elementary School.