Midterms Civic Engagement

My favorite unit from my Political Science Class was our "Midterms Unit". During our fall semester of 2022, there was a lot going on politically. This was a blessing because it made connecting the class to current events very easy. We were constantly talking about what was going on outside of the classroom, and using it to apply to our concepts we were learning inside of the classroom. The biggest thing we were keeping our eye on was the midterms happening in November. 

We were approaching midterms, and it was constantly around us. From the television ads, to phone calls, surveys, etc... The students knew about it, and were eager to talk about it. I used this as a great opportunity to adapt something we were going to do anyways, and use it to involve something happening within the community politically. I decided to introduce a whole unit based around civic engagement and the midterms. 

I wanted to challenge the kids to do something where they had to be actively involved in civic engagement. But I did not want them to just participate, I wanted them to understand exactly what they were doing and understand the impacts of what they were doing. Just actively participating in civic engagement in great, but when students begin to understand the deeper levels to what they are doing and how it can help it really does open doors for them. 

Our goals were clear from the beginning. We wanted to survey and poll the midterm elections. Analyze and predict the election results. Then compare our polling results to the actual election results. This sounds simple enough, but it was going to demand a ton of work form these students. Luckily, I had the prefect class to pull something like this workload off. The class split into three teams, The Data Team, The Survey/Polling Team, and The Administration Team. Each team had their own responsibilities, but by delegating and and utilizing collaboration and teamwork, the task at hand was achievable. 

We needed to start by creating our own poll. This was step one in our plan. This responsibility was up to "The Survey/Polling Team". They used Google Forms to create a professional looking survey which asked all about the Ohio midterms. The survey started with basic demographics (which the kids came up with). Finding basic parameters like race, ethnicity, religion, and income. Then the students polled the election results of all the races happening. This included the senate race, the house races for every district, the governor race, and the Ohio supreme court races. They went through several versions of the survey until eventually they had come up with one that they felt was ready to use. Below you can see the survey completely created by the students. 

After the survey was created. The "Survey Team" then had their next responsibility. They needed to distribute it to highschools for students to take it. In order for us to achieve what we needed to do, we needed to make sure we got the survey out to a large number of people so that our data would reflect a more honest opinion of the people. Along with this we needed to make sure we got the survey to students in each of Ohio's districts so that urban and rural votes were all accounted for. The students did an excellent job of using their resources in order to successfully distribute their survey. They were able to send the survey via email to over 300 high schools in the state of Ohio. 

While the "Survey/Polling" team was busy working on all of their responsibilities the "Data team" was busy coming together to make a data sheet to display all of our data gathered from the survey. They used google sheets to make a wonderful page that displayed percentages and total votes for every polling question. However, they did not stop there. They also were able to break down the data by demographic. This was easily the coolest part of the data, and the area we used the most to reflect on our data. Below you can see our data that was completley student led and created. 

All this was happening, but there was still one other team of students. the "Administrative Team". This was only 4 or 5 students. But they had a big task at hand. They were in charge of planning the in-person mock vote that we were going to hold for the whole high school on election day. These students contacted local officials of Stark County and got them to donate over 1000 "I Voted" stickers. They bought dum-dum suckers to hand out. They made flyers to pass out. They organized the entire event. This included decorating the hallway, setting up the voting booths, instrcting teachers to bring their classes down at the right time. It was really impressive to see what these students put together. It was a very successfull day in our hallway. Below you can see some pictures from the event. 

This is one of my proudest units in my young career. To see what these students were able to accomplish was remarkable to me. They utilized such a wide range of skills from collaboration, to communication, to data entry, and the list goes on. The level of accomplishment this group of students were able to accomplish within this unit was astounding. Not to mention the great reflections we got out of it. 

The first reflection we focused on was the data. One of the original goals was to predict and analyze the data. Surprisingly the data we received from our polling was very accurate to the actual midterm election results. For example, our data had 52.6% of the votes going to J.D. Vance in the senate race. J.D. Vance ended up winning with 53.3% of the votes. This was a pattern we saw all across our data. The data from our survey was very accurate, which was very cool to see, and definitely rewarding for the students to see. We reflected a lot on the demographics, breaking down what patterns we saw, and which trends were accurate throughout the different demographic breakdowns. 

Overall, this was a great unit. The students were able to benefit so much from everything they were responsible for. From the skills they used to the big takeaways of political scince. This was something that they were able to get their feet wet with and really understand the science portion of "Political Science". This also gave them the opportunity to particpate in some civic engagement which is a huge part of social studies.