Democracy in Action: Following Up on My Students’ Questions
(This is a long overdue follow-up post)
A few weeks ago, my students left me with a wonderful problem: they generated so many great questionsleading to larger inquiry, that we had to narrow down the list in some way. I must admit, when I came to school that Wednesday morning, I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do, so I took a chance. I gave my students the entire list of questions, and told them they had 30 minutes to democratically choose five of them that would help us answer our unit essential questions: “How democratic is the US?” and “Does my vote count?” I held an election for a facilitator, told students they first had to decide how they would go about making the decision, and then sat down and took notes on their process. What followed in each section captured the American political process in all its flawed messiness.
First Period
This class held no discussion of how to make their decision. The facilitator started by asking everyone which of