Monday, April 26 (6:48 hours logged today)

This morning, I caught up on some reflections from Week 2, including my third Critical Reflection. I want to start keeping up with documentation more frequently so that it doesn’t pile up (I am currently writing this entry on Wednesday, April 28).

While writing my Critical Reflection, I noticed that my essential question was not up to date with the work that I am doing. In its original form, it read, “How can I use my knowledge of American civics/politics/law to inspire others to think more critically about current events?” This question encompasses a broader range of topics than I am currently covering. Sticking with it would likely mean valuing breadth over depth with my course. I believe that elections and voting are the most crucial aspects of American politics for young people to understand—they are at the root of every other political issue in our country. As such, I narrowed my essential question. Here is what it is now:

“How can I use my knowledge of American civics/politics/law to inspire others to be more informed voters?”

After completing my leftover reflections and reframing my essential question, I spent my afternoon designing my slide deck for my upcoming voter suppression talk. I plan to examine the Supreme Court’s decision Shelby County v. Holder and its impact on voting rights in 2020. I think one of the best parts of my gerrymandering presentation was opening with Maryland’s oddly-shaped 3rd Congressional district (check it out in the slide deck embedded in this post!). It was a striking visual to introduce the topic, and I want to do something similar with my voter suppression presentation. I have made a couple of slides showing images of extraordinarily long lines in the 2020 Presidential elections (from Fulton County, GA; Harris County, TX; and Durham County, NC). I felt astonished seeing those images on TV in November, so I think they could be a provocative way to capture students’ attention.

After my introduction slides, I introduce Shelby County as the case that many consider being at the root of the suppressive laws that lead to long lines in majority-minority communities. I have two slides explaining the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance provisions, and I will likely create a few more to make sure the idea sticks for students.

The presentation is still in its early stages, but I will embed it in one of my entries as soon as it is ready!

 

Tuesday, April 27 (1:41 hours logged today)

I tried to take today easy—I think I’m going to keep using Tuesdays as rest days. As such, I did not do any work on my lesson plans or presentations, but I did explore something related to education.

In preparation for our third cohort meeting, Sergei sent my group several links related to the Summerhill School. It’s a progressive (like, REALLY progressive) school in the United Kingdom where every student (of which there about 70-80) has an equal say in how the school runs. Each week, the adults and students gather as a community to form new laws and decide behavioral disputes democratically. As if that was not progressive enough, kids do not have any traditional classes and instead have free reign to do with their days as they wish. They can choose to create art (eg. wood/metalworking, painting, music), play outdoors, or pursue an intellectual curiosity.

The website assures people that Summerhill is no utopia, but it certainly seems as close to one as any school can get. I like the school’s approach to letting kids develop their entire selves, as opposed to more traditional methods of only educating them in certain, neatly defined subjects. It seems to me that the Summerhill kids exist in a world without artifice or anxiety—they are in a place where they can truly discover who they are. 

But therein lies a problem for me—the Summerhill world is not our world. They are free(r) minds living in a world that is not freeing for most children. Even at LREI, though we enjoy a great degree of freedom, there is still a lot of hand-holding and tacit encouragement to pursue particular ways of thinking and being. I am concerned that the Summerhill kids will graduate and find themselves in a world that is hostile to the type of individualism that they exhibit. Would the Summerhill kids not have trouble adapting to others that remain conditioned by the system that Summerhill disrupts? I have to read some more perspectives from Summerhill graduates, but I am skeptical.

Lastly, the Summerhill website claimed that their model “can work anywhere.” From my non-expert point of view, I very much disagree. I don’t even think it could work at LREI, as progressive as we claim we are. The closest things to Summerhill that we have ever had (that I know of) were our town halls. Students would gather in two-grade-size groups and discuss issues about the school without adult supervision. I imagine they were designed to bring the community closer to the administrative decision-making process—to make the school more democratic. This is not what occurred (in the one town hall that I attended). It was complete chaos. Some students treated it seriously, but they were shouted over by trouble-makers that saw the whole democratic process as a joke. No progress was made, and the meetings have not happened in three years.

Such demonstrates the fragility of direct democracy (a neat tie-in to what I have been studying about the origins of voting in the United States). It may work for an insulated community of 100 kids and adults in the middle of the English woods, but for 200 + rowdy New York City kids? No way. Not with the level of conditioning that we are used to here. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 10, “a pure democracy … a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.” The larger the school community, the less plausible the Summerhill model seems.

 

Wednesday, April 28 (7:02 hours logged today)

Today serves as my new record for the number of hours I spent working on my project! I’ve been trying to “front-load” my work this week so that I can free up my weekend.

My voter suppression presentation is in a much better place than it was on Monday. Here it is:

I plan to replace the images of long voting lines with a video from Vox that makes the connection to voter suppression clear. After that introduction, I will delve into Shelby County. I debated whether to use a Quimbee law brief video to give an overview of the case, but I would rather explain it myself. I added a few slides that demonstrate the effects of the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance provision, the positions of each side during oral argument, and the key arguments from the majority and dissenting opinions. 

I would say that my draft of the presentation is about two-thirds finished. I’ve covered every portion of Shelby that I want to, but there’s still something missing—I need to tie Shelby to the long voting lines that I showed at the beginning of the presentation. I want to explore some of the state laws that have been passed post-Shelby and if/how they suppress minority voters. A good example of this would be Georgia’s SB202, which was recently under fire by the media and the White House for being “un-American.” Additionally, I would like to cover the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore the provision of the Voting Rights Act struck down in Shelby. 

Something that I am struggling with is devising a creative activity for students to engage with voter suppression. This was simple in my gerrymandering presentation—the Jamboard activity was a no-brainer. I’m finding it a bit harder to bring more interactivity into my voter suppression presentation. I considered adding a slide with the Shelby County constitutional question and having students discuss the merits of each side. We did this a lot in Ann’s Constitutional Law class. However, it’s a much easier activity to run if students are familiar with the constitution and accustomed to debating the law. I don’t think this would be the case with the Young Democrats—a vigorous constitutional debate may be too much to expect.

Interactivity is crucial to a successful lesson, so it will be the main item on my agenda for the next few days.

 

Thursday, April 29 (6:45 hours logged today)

I decided to put my lesson on voter suppression on hold after facing difficulties with developing an activity. I also figured that I can’t afford to focus on a single subject. As such, I returned to my unit on the Electoral College. 

My “What is the Electoral College” presentation was not in a good place when I checked on it this morning. All it contained were a couple of quick “check for understanding” slides and a Vox video (I feel like I have consulted a number of these throughout my research process. I don’t want to teach my course only through Vox videos). I scrapped everything that was there and started from scratch.

My first step in revising the presentation was to find an image to hook students’ attention (read more about my love of these in Wednesday’s journal entry). I began thinking about how unusual the Electoral College seems, especially for a nation that sees itself as the world’s preeminent democracy. I wondered how the Electoral College compared to other democracies’ systems of electing their presidents. While investigating this query, I found this research report that showed that among the world’s 28 freest democracies, the United States’ Electoral College is unique. 

Unfortunately, the table provided on page four would not be a particularly provocative introduction to the Electoral College. I imagined that it would be much more accessible for students in map form, so I searched for a website that would allow me to create a custom world map. The site mapchart.net would suit my needs perfectly. Using the data from the table, I created this map:

With the introduction in place, I moved on to the function and origin of the Electoral College. I still have more work to do in this section before I move on to the electoral impacts of the system, but here is my progress so far:

Just like with the voter suppression lesson, I want to develop some kind of activity about the Electoral College (separate from the debate I am still planning). Luckily for me, I have access to plenty of maps and tools from sites like 270toWin, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. I am thinking of analyzing the 2016 Election to demonstrate the impacts of gaining small majorities in a few swing states. I will spend some time tomorrow thinking about how to turn this into an interactive experience for students.

 

Friday, April 30 (3:06 hours logged today)

I have found a solution to my presentation’s interactivity problem: the Voting Rights Lab Election Law Tracker. The site allows users to explore existing and pending voting legislation in each of the 50 states and Washington DC. The tool covers all sorts of issue areas—including voter ID, absentee voting, voter roll maintenance, and redistricting—so it should align perfectly with my course!

The Tracker’s best feature is the Voting Rights by State map. By clicking on any state, you can see all of its current and pending legislation related to voting rights. Each pending bill has details as to when it was introduced, what issue(s) it covers, and whether it will make voting easier for more people (pro- vs. anti-voter). Furthermore, the “existing legislation” section is an FAQ for voters in that state, providing in-depth analysis and citations for virtually any voting-related question.

I think the “voting rights by state” map would be an excellent tool for a voter suppression activity. Here’s what I am thinking about doing:

1. Split the class into several small groups. Assuming there are about 15 students (which was the number last time), that would make five groups of three.
2. Assign each group a state. I am not sure if I want to do this randomly (using this random state generator) or plan which states to assign.
   1. Pro-random: Doing this would capture a wide variety of states, some that were covered by Section 5 and some that were not. Having students learn about non-covered states would act as a “control”—something to compare the previously-covered states to.
   2. Pro-assigned: Doing this would ensure that students explore the states previously covered by Section 5. I would probably choose Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Alabama. 
3. Come up with some questions/issues for students to explore within the Tracker.  I’m not certain as to the scope of these questions. I obviously can’t ask them to research every single issue on the site (especially since I will spend a good portion of the session covering Shelby, not diving deep into every type of election law). I’ll brainstorm on this over the weekend.
4. Have each group create a Jamboard or Google Slides page that summarizes the state’s election rules. Also, have them be prepared to discuss as a full group. I find that this type of activity is always really successful at LREI. It’s a healthy medium between straight-up research and utilizing visual/spatial/creative skills.

There’s still more I need to work on for this activity, but I think I have a pretty solid framework. As a transition between Shelby the Voting Rights Tracker, I added two slides that show the short-term impacts of the Supreme Court decision:

Saturday, May 1 (1:20 hours logged today)

I put my presentations on hold for today. My focus was on something much bigger (and equally as relevant to my project): registering to vote.

In New York City, there are three ways to register (through the NYC Board of Elections website. And only three that I know of):

1. In-person. I thought this would be the least convenient option out of the three.
2. Online. This seems like it would work the best, but I do not have a DMV number, so I had to resort to option 3
3. By mail

I faced a few hurdles to registering by mail. First of all, the application is on legal-sized paper, which I don’t have. It’s also all in blue ink, and I don’t have a working color printer. As such, I had to obtain the registration form elsewhere. 

The Board of Elections website says that post offices offer voter registration forms, but this was not the case at my local post office. I also tried my City Councilman’s and U.S. Representative’s offices, but they were both closed (I couldn’t believe that I had lived only four blocks away from both of their offices for all of my eight years of living in NYC!). Finally, I was able to get a form from my local library on 96th Street. After returning home, I filled out the application and mailed it!

Overall, the process was very simple (minus the walking around to three buildings part, but even that was manageable). My next steps for preparing for the New York City Democratic Mayoral are to learn about the candidates and our new Ranked-Choice Voting system. In the future, I will find a way to integrate my experience voting for the first time into my “How to Vote” unit.