On Oct. 30th, AP Government students talked to Congressman Danny Davis about the idea of civic deliberation and engagement in the political space.

The service learning project for the students in AP Government and Politics (AP Gov) took place this week through a zoom meeting with Congressman Davis.

“It was our service learning component, it connected to what we were doing in class and then it also hopefully, built upon some of the concepts of AP Gov as well,” said AP Gov teacher John Smith.

Some students feel the meeting helped them take notice of their engagement in the political world and civic issues.

“I think the meeting was to make us think about civic engagement and how we can be connected to our congressmen,” said AP Gov student Megan Healy ‘25.

Students underwent a process of preparations in order to be able to fully engage in the meeting.

“We spent about three weeks going through a curriculum that was designed by an organization called Connecting Classrooms to Congress,” said Smith.

Students were also tasked with writing a research essay, following the prompt  “How can all Americans be able to support themselves?.”

“We wrote essays in order to prepare and we microfocused on increasing welfare programs, but we also thought about giving increased worker training and raising the minimum wage,” said Healy.

The program that students underwent for three weeks helped some understand the civic and government class curriculums.

“It’s designed to give a real world implementation of that [civics/government curriculum] into this town hall meeting,” said Smith. 

For the first year that a meeting with a congressman has been arranged for AP Gov classes, teachers feel the meeting was an overall success.

“I think that overall despite the tweaks for the first year, I think it was a successful enterprise being able to meet as high schoolers with your congressperson. It’s not something that everybody has opportunities to do,” said Smith.

Due to the tech issues that occurred with Zoom, student engagement faced disruptions.

“I would say some of the students were engaged in conversations. Some were not. I think part of that was because of tech issues,” said Smith.

Although there were issues with this first meeting and use of the program, the program may come back to the curriculum of AP Gov in the following years with improvements.

“I think that there are ways that we can improve the implementation of the curriculum for next year if we do it again,” said Smith.

Students and teachers were appreciative for the opportunity to complete the program.

“It’s not something that everybody has opportunities to do,” said Smith.