Serving Our Students

This website is the culmination of two years' work by teacher candidates in the social studies methods class in the Graduate Teacher Education Program(GTEP) at Portland State University. Civic engagement is an essential skill for effective participation in a democracy, helping students understand their individual rights and responsibilities and make decisions that promote social justice. Students who leave high school with civic competencies achieved through high quality civic learning are able to address complex challenges, work in diverse communities, and creatively solve problems.

Most transformative civic learning programs are teacher-driven and teacher-dependent, but few teachers have the opportunity to experience or be mentored in civic engagement curriculum. To gain experience and mentorship the social studies teacher candidates in GTEP participate in a year long Civic Engagement Project, studying local problems, discussing public policy issues, and developing consensus on one project. In both years after choosing a project the teacher candidates decided to create a website to freely share their work with fellow teachers.

The PSU Civic Engagement Project is modeled after Project Citizen, developed by the Center for Civic Education, to promote responsible participation in local/state government while providing opportunities for secondary students to monitor and influence public policy. Middle and high school students work collaboratively to identify a public policy problem, conduct research, evaluate alternative solutions, develop a public policy proposal and create a political action plan before presenting their project in a hearing to a community panel. We adapted the Project Citizen model for teacher candidates to experience a similar process in their university social studies methods class.