Monday, May 17 (4:52 hours logged today)

I spent all of my time today working on my sixth Critical Reflection. You can read it here.

 

Tuesday, May 18 (5:00 hours logged today)

I had a college panel this morning, so I arrived late to this morning’s cohort meeting. We did not do much during the meeting anyways—we just covered possibilities for Senior Project evening presentations. I plan to explore these further during the weekend.

I resumed my progress on my Electoral College presentation in preparation for my lesson on Friday. I had previously created slides covering the Electoral College’s constitutional provision and why there are 538 electors. This is about how much I want to cover when it comes to the Electoral College’s mechanics. For the next part of the presentation, I want students to think about “swing states” and the “winner-take-all” method of appointing electors. I think these two systems contribute the most to distorting the nationwide electoral playing field. They are also essential to understanding the 1876, 2016, and 2020 Elections, all of which I am considering to include in an activity.

Here are the slides that I created today:

In the next couple of days, I will need to organize the “swing state” slides better (and include some discussion questions) and create an activity that demonstrates their practical impact.

 

Wednesday, May 19 (8:52 hours logged today)

Today marks another new record for my daily hours!

This morning, I met with Karyn to discuss how I might present during Senior Project evening. I asked her how I might incorporate interactivity into a five-minute presentation, something I pondered in my sixth Critical Reflection. Karyn introduced something that I had previously ruled out: doing a mini-lesson/activity.

Both of us agreed that this would be the ideal way to present my work. After all, if I’ve gained anything from this project, it’s that many people tend to learn best through hands-on experiences. What better way to demonstrate this knowledge than actually involving the audience in one of my activities? If I had to choose one, it would have to be the one on gerrymandering (or some variation on it). Not only is it the most visually striking activity I designed, but it’s also probably the easiest to introduce to an unfamiliar audience.

There are some substantial obstacles to teaching a mini-lesson/activity, the most glaring being the five-minute time constraint. My shortest lessons ran for about 40 minutes, and the gerrymandering Jamboard probably took about 10-15 minutes. My first step towards addressing this challenge would be to scale down the map that participants have to “gerrymander.” It is currently eight-by-eight, and even making it a seven-by-seven or six-by six square would make things a lot simpler. 

However, I think the biggest issue is having to give context for gerrymandering. This comprised the bulk of my three lessons on gerrymandering. Although I can cut some details (eg. independent redistricting commissions and the Constitution’s apportionment clause), I still have to give a good enough overview that people will know what we’re talking about. Here are some ways that I would address the context issue:

• Cut the “competitive” and “representative” objectives and just focus on the “pro-Democrat” and “pro-Republican” ones.
• If I include any slides at all (which would be a helpful visual for audience members who know nothing about gerrymandering), limit the number to ~ 3. This is the bare minimum:
  • One slide defining gerrymandering
  • One slide explaining packing and cracking (perhaps I can find/create some graphic that shows this well—either a gif or animating lines directly in Google Slides)
  • One slide displaying gerrymandering Congressional districts. If I go further, briefly touch on their effect on elections (maybe refer back to my article comparison activity for which districts to show—see slide 11 from my May 10 entry).
• Only do the activity with students. I would organize the activity essentially as a “fishbowl”—in each breakout room, students will participate while adults observe. This could have several benefits:
  • Teaching to adults is not my specialty. If the adult participants have tech issues with Zoom or Jamboard, troubleshooting will only eat away at my time.
  • According to Karyn, there is a chance that some of the 11th Grade participants will be members of the Democracy Project, the Electoral Reform Junior Trip group, or Ann’s Elections class. These students will already have background knowledge about gerrymandering and can take a leadership role in the activity.
  • Doing the activity with students would be a more accurate representation of my project since I only presented to high schoolers.

This mini-lesson idea could make for a provocative presentation. But given all of the roadblocks, it might not work out at all. For the 5/25 first draft deadline, I will try to write a regular speech in addition to a mini-lesson. If the lesson becomes unworkable, then I will have that speech to fall back on.

 

Thursday, May 20 (4:30 hours logged today)

Tomorrow is my presentation on the Electoral College, so I focused my entire day’s work on preparing for it. My first order of business was the slide deck. Here it is:

Once I finished the slides, I focused on the activity. I went with my initial idea of splitting the class into two groups and giving each an election to study. However, instead of going with 1876 and 2016 like how I planned, I went with 2016 and 2020. Examining the Trump elections would give the activity a modern context and could better illustrate how the Electoral College is relevant to students’ lives. During the activity, students will explore electoral maps from the New York Times to discover the states that made the biggest difference in Trump’s 2016 win and 2020 loss. Then, they will use interactive tools from 270ToWin to model an alternate scenario in which the opposite candidate won each. Finally, they will display their findings on a Jamboard document and present them to the class.

This activity is pretty simple, and it does not deviate much from the format of my previous ones. Part of its simplicity is by design—given the close margins in each swing state, it is not that difficult to envision alternate scenarios to Trump’s elections. Moreover, I wanted to leave some space at the end of the session for a discussion about the Electoral College and democracy, as well as an opportunity for the Minnesota students to take action on the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

As it stands, the presentation is jam-packed. It includes more slides than my other two 40-minute lessons. I’m concerned about how I will manage the time tomorrow, but I think it gives students a well-rounded introduction to a fundamental institution in our country.

 

Friday, May 21 (7:06 hours logged today)

Today was my final lesson with the Minnesota Young Democrats, as well as the last one of my entire Senior Project. Although I am sad that the project is coming to an end, I am proud of the progress I have made. Here are some of my reflections from today’s lesson:

Points of Success

• Asked a lot more questions, such as “what did you notice about this map?” and “why do swing states have such a strong influence in elections?” These questions helped spur some strong discussion.
• Mechanical walkthrough of the EC (slides 5-11) 
• I think the Jamboard activity was a provocative—albeit simplistic 9see my comments about this in the improvement section)—demonstration of swing states’ influence on elections. Here is what students produced:

• The NPV piece was a great way to end the lesson and the course as a whole. The topics we had discussed—gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the Electoral College—are all depressing barriers to democracy. However, I thought it was important to let them know that they (as young people from Minnesota) have a real chance to make a difference in the fight against such systems of power. 

 

Points of Improvement

• Cut the first slide. I’m glad I cut the Mentimeter activity since that would have taken too much time. I think I could have saved even more time if I had cut the democracy question altogether. Brought it up at the end of the lesson anyway, so I would not lose much from cutting the first slide. Furthermore, I think the lesson would have been more impactful if I had started with the world map.
• On the world map slide, ask students what they notice. Do not do the whole animation-U.S.-reveal thing. Just show the entire map and ask them to draw their own conclusions.
• I could have done more to go over the 101-type basics of the Electoral College. I went pretty quickly into “swing states” and the “winner-take-all” system. If I had added a slide or two showing an Electoral College map (like I originally had before I added the sample ballot to slide 5), I think the transition to the more difficult subtopics would have been easier.
• I think I could have organized the swing state discussion a bit better. I had to cut some of the questions, and I think I may have moved too fast. 
  • I also should not have paused the video as much—and if I did, I should have asked students what they noticed, not just give them the conclusion
• I could have added some more depth to the Jamboard activity. On my Google Form, one student commented that “the activity for the last lesson was slightly less interesting than the others,” and I agree. One way to improve this would be to specifically ask for the minimum margin of victory. This would encourage students to conduct a more thorough mathematical analysis, which would have given the activity more depth.
• One student asked why the EC exists. I told her, but I wish I had something in the presentation on this. Students need to know that the U.S. was not founded based on purely democratic principles.
• Similar to the swing state discussion, I think I could have organized the EC/democracy discussion better. Prepare some more general questions so that students could think more broadly. I also should have kept better track of the time. This discussion took time away from the conclusion about NPV.
• The transition between the Jamboard activity and the discussion about abolishing the Electoral College was somewhat rough. Students had a bunch of questions about why Republicans oppose changing the system, and I struggled to explain how they benefit from it. I’m not sure how I could have tightened this area up, but I should have.
• I could have been less technical with how I explained NPV. Perhaps the Federalist Society video would have been better than me stumbling over my words to explain NPV.
• I wish I had prepared some notes to conclude the lesson/course. I sort of stumbled over my words/repeated myself as I told students that they can make a difference. Especially given that students were ready to leave, having some prepared notes would have been a more organized way to end the lesson.
• I should have recorded the lesson! I forgot again.

This might not have been my best lesson (that honor goes to my in-person gerrymandering lesson on May 11), but it was a satisfying conclusion to an amazing project. As I wrote in my fourth Critical Reflection, I want my work to inspire young people to reject cynicism towards politics. Even though issues like gerrymandering and voter suppression hurt democracy, those systems are not set in stone. And even if the politicians are not willing to take action against them, we can use our voices to do so—whether through advocating for NPV or voting for pro-democracy politicians. I believe in protest and activism, and I also believe that education should be the foundation of both of those things; to change a system, you must be able to understand it first. 

When my lesson ended, one of the Young Democrats’ leaders, Claire, told me that although she still did not fully understand the Electoral College, she knew more than she did before. She’s not alone with this sentiment, as you can read from my Google Form results below. Her comment really touched me. I never claimed to be a political science expert, and it was never my goal to produce any through my classes. But I knew from the start that if I can help just a few kids see our government more clearly, my project would be a success. 

I can gladly say that my project has succeeded beyond my expectations!