Deliberating in a Democracy program updates
Romanian teachers visit Maryland, South Carolina teachers learn to deliberate
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Visiting Romanian teachers meet with Ms. Rita Foy-Moss at the U.S. Department of Education. Ms. Foy-Moss oversees the Department's civic education programs and is the grant manager for the DID project.
February 12, 2009
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Silver Spring, MD
Deliberating in a Democracy (DID) involves more than 200 teachers engaging more than 4,000 students in ten countries. The project is designed to improve the quality of civic education and engagement by teaching young people to consider, deliberate, and exchange ideas about important public policy issues and democracy. The focus of the project is a series of classroom deliberations that are supported by a combination of staff development for participating teachers, partnerships between teachers in the United States and teachers abroad, discussion boards for students and teachers, student conferences, international teacher exchanges, and carefully constructed materials to teach and engage students.
Romania/Montgomery County (MD) update
Last week Street Law hosted teachers from Romania as part of the DID program. Their week included observing students at work in three Montgomery County (MD) high schools; discussing democracy, civics, and teaching strategies with their partner teachers; and gathering educational resources about free speech and free press from the Newseum. They also met with Ms. Rita Foy-Moss, who oversees civic education programs at the Department of Education and, thanks to the office of Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), they watched Congress in action.
The exchange continues in April, when three Maryland teachers will visit their colleagues in Romania.
South Carolina update
More than 30 teachers and social studies supervisors assemble in Myrtle Beach, SC, to learn how to use deliberation in their classrooms. The workshop is part of an effort to share the strategies and resources developed for DID with teachers who are not directly participating in the program.
A workshop was held January 23–25, 2009, in Myrtle Beach, SC, to train 30 area teachers and social studies supervisors to use deliberation in their classrooms. Also, Tarana Bayramova and Nataliya Kustovskaya, from the Azerbaijan and Moscow DID sites, attended the workshop to share their international perspective.
The teachers deliberated whether the government should require mandatory national service (civilian and/or military). The discussion was lively and relevant as the new administration is considering such a policy.
Several of the social studies supervisors are planning district level trainings to share what they learned with other teachers in their school districts.
DID is a collaborative program of Street Law, Inc., Constitutional Rights Foundation, and Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago. Funding is provided by the United States Department of Education’s Civic Education Program in the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. To learn more about the project or to view the lesson plans, please go to www.deliberating.org
Source:
(Reproduced with permission)
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Deliberating in a Democracy
Topic: Civic & Law-Related Education
Topic: Democracy/Human Rights