Civic Action, Community Engagement, and American Representative Democracy

People Powered provides resources and an experiential learning opportunity to augment the curriculum for civics or social studies instruction as outlined in the West Virginia College and Career Readiness Standards. In designing the learning model, the Byrd Center hopes to build as much flexibility into the project components as possible so that you can use the pieces which are of the best benefit to your students in pursuit of our overarching instructional goal. 

This goal is to give your students, through content and experience, an understanding of the civic activity which is the bedrock of our representative democracy. We regularly instruct our students on the importance of the Constitution, on our civic duties to vote and to help serve our country in whatever way we can, but traditional civics education resources often leave out the daily work that goes on across the United States to help our communities and people in need. This is the area where People Powered can inspire your students to learn and become active participants in civic life as they become the next participants and leaders in our representative democracy.

Phase 1: Introduce the core concepts of American representative democracy through hands-on, experiential and inquiry-based lesson plans

​Utilize resources covered in training and through the resources panel of the People Powered Portal to cover core curricular standards and give your students a comprehensive understanding of the Constitution, separation of powers, federalism, and the legislative process. Consider the resources portal as a database of additional ideas or materials than can augment your existing curriculum or introduce new perspectives on these areas of knowledge to your students.

Phase 2: Give your students an awareness of the impact of civic action in their own state and region

​After covering broader content at a national level during the first term, the lessons used in the second term will shift the focus to a regional scale, examining the factors of representative democracy as they impact the state of West Virginia. The primary resource for this phase is Redeveloping Appalachia which utilizes records from archival collections preserved in the state to explore how a major legislative initiative of the Great Society left an indelible mark in helping to live the Appalachian region from systemic poverty. 

Phase 3: Craft your proposal(s) for addressing your community's issue

Decide, depending on the size of your class, to have the students divide into groups or have the entire class act as one unit to determine an issue challenging their community. Consider inviting local civic officials to speak to their students or setup a virtual or in-person meeting with a local newspaper editor to hear about the specific needs their community faces. You may also use the Redeveloping Appalachia learning platform developed by the Byrd Center to examine chronic historical issues faced by West Virginia communities to determine if those same problems are continuing to affect their region. Work with your students to craft proposals, using models such as those found in Redeveloping Appalachia, to address the problem in your community. 

If possible, the project staff would love to attend (virtually) your student presentations!