Jack Trowbridge – Week 0 Journal

April 5 and 6 (12:10 total hours logged)

Before discussing my current work, I want to reflect on some of the structural changes that I am implementing/planning to implement:

In my Action Items post, I said that I wanted to cover the limits on the federal government, the Supreme Court, and civil liberties, and an introduction to American foreign policy. As I anticipated, these areas are far too broad (especially the first one). Each one could have its own college-level course. Instead, I want to focus my course more on voting rights and U.S. elections. There are many aspects of this topic that I can examine, including the history of the franchise, gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and how to be a voter. I am confident about this pivot because all of these topics are relatively new to me, and I am excited to learn more about them. This speaks to the relevance of the issue; I am going to be a voter as soon as June of 2021 (with the NYC Democratic mayoral primaries), and many students learning from my material are future voters, as well. (I’ve also already spent over 12 hours researching voting rights, so I would be a bit reluctant to go back to my original, not-as-good idea).
I have previously written (see backup plan) about how I would ideally like to teach my material to a live (likely online) class. It is becoming more difficult for me to see this as a reality. The teacher that I reached out to over Spring Break never responded, and I would have liked to start coordinating the live connection by now (as it would involve at least one week of observing a class before I start teaching). Given this, I would like to rely more on the asynchronous teaching resources I mentioned in my backup plan. This is not too much of a loss, as I would have been creating them regardless. However, I think solely dedicating my time to creating those resources would result in higher-quality products, as I would not have to split my attention and time by having to worry about classroom management and other aspects of live teaching.
In my documentation plan, I stated that I will publish my journals and lesson plans on the Senior Project blog. Though I think these journal entries are well-suited for the Senior Project blog, I don’t think the lesson plans are. I plan for my lessons to come in diverse forms (debates, activities, discussions, podcast + oral argument analysis, maybe even an interview), and I think a standalone website would be best to house all of my content. I am thinking of using a service like Wix or Weebly to create my own blog/website. And so what if it’s “not my strong suit”—I will figure it out!

For these past two days, I have been doing research pursuant to the first two bullet points. I have gathered a wide variety of sources and compiled them into one large document (which I definitely need to organize better). Some of them are structured to build up to some activity/lesson/series of lessons, such as the material on the Electoral College. The system has always seemed so out of time to me, and I wanted to understand arguments for and against it, both from colonial and modern times. But more than just learning for myself, I gathered those sources to organize a debate activity on the Electoral College. Here are the questions I plan to ask:

Is the Electoral College the best system to govern American Presidential Elections?
How do alternative systems compare to the current one?

I am still working out the details of this activity, but I am beginning to plan other ones. I saw several videos from video creators such as Crash Course and CGP Grey that visually demonstrated the power of gerrymandering. I think it would be interesting to explain this concept at a middle school level by putting them in the shoes of the gerrymandering officials. Here’s a state with a 60% blue and 40% yellow population. Draw districts such that the yellows have more Congressional representatives than the blues. Again, still working on it.

I have also done some research into the history of the franchise and influential Supreme Court cases related to voting rights, but it has yet to develop into an activity prototype.

Overall, I think I am on track with the goals I set for myself for Spring Break and Week 0. The “skeleton” of the course is developing nicely, and I finished all of the relevant sections of Jessamyn Conrad’s book over break. Moving forward, I will continue researching the voting rights topics mentioned in the previous paragraph and sculpting my proposed activities.

April 7-11 (29:10 hours logged so far)

The first week of my Senior Project is just about at a close, and I have made a lot of progress that I am proud of.

I have successfully narrowed the scope of my project to voting rights and the electoral process. I think covering these topics will translate to a much more impactful experience for students and other future voters who engage with my content.

I did extensive research into my new topic, drawing on some of my prior knowledge of constitutional law. The research I did this week into the Electoral College, voter suppression, and gerrymandering will prove vital as I design presentations and activities in the coming weeks.

Speaking of designing activities, I created my first one! I have titled it “Getting to Know Your Reps,” and its purpose is to familiarize students (and other voters) with the process of evaluating their elected representatives on the local, state, and federal levels. When designing it, I considered several attributes that voters may factor into their voting decisions, including demographic information, prior experience, responsibilities, and political positions. I also included a space to fill in officials’ contact information, which may be useful for students engaged in political activism. I hope that students who complete this activity will gain a better understanding of the different layers of representative government and what factors to contemplate when they eventually go to the polls.

I have attached a PDF of the activity and a Google Doc with its corresponding instructions to the bottom of this post. Feel free to do it, if you like! Any feedback would be useful.

Here are some things that are on my agenda for Week 1:

I worked a lot on gathering materials for a debate on the Electoral College (which I compiled in this document). According to Pew Research, 60% of those ages 18-29 (the youngest demographic in the study) want to replace the system with a national popular vote. As more young Americans oppose the system, I thought it would be a great exercise for middle/high school students to explore both sides of the issue in depth. Next week, I want to design a debate activity around the Electoral College.
I want part of my curriculum to focus on the expansion of voting rights throughout this country’s history. However, this is the area I have done the least amount of research into at the moment. I want to create some activities/lessons that cover the struggles of Black people and women for the right to vote. Perhaps I will create some sort of Google Slides Presentation or interactive timeline (with Prezi). I am still deciding on the presentation format but the research must come first.
Much of my research early in the week was dedicated to understanding gerrymandering. I want to continue researching how the practice has affected recent U.S. elections, and I will use that information to develop an activity that I wrote about in my previous journal entry.