Incorporating Current Events into Lesson Plans

Brandon Chavez-Jimenez, Leah A. Nillas

Research output: Faculty Advisor of Undergraduate Research

Abstract

The purpose of this teacher research is to understand how I as an educator can do my part to help high school history students become more civically engaged in our modern day, post pandemic society. Civic engagement is defined as the ability for someone to contribute pro socially and politically to their community (Wray-Lake, 2019). That was something I wanted to encourage in my students was to be aware of what is going on around them so eventually they can be informed voters when it becomes time to vote. What I did to try and encourage this was incorporate current events into my lesson plans during my student teaching to see how students responded to that in terms of civic engagement. This ties into culturally relevant pedagogy where aspects of a student's culture are brought into the classroom. I did this through using current events in local, state and federal government so students can see how what we are covering in class relates to their lives. Also, students had to complete bi-weekly current event assignments where students had to read an article and then provide a summary and their opinion on. The purpose of this assignment was to help students keep up with current events going on that are relevant to these students. Lastly, students were encouraged to participate in their community via extra credit for volunteering in the community. There were multiple ways I determined if students were becoming more civically engaged, but it all comes back to students showing me that they care about what is going on in the government around them. This research incorporated the quality of work on student’s current event assignments, field notes and anecdotal records of things students said to me to show me that they are starting to think more about civics outside of government class.
Original languageAmerican English
StatePublished - 2024

Disciplines

  • Education

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