Discussing Civic Engagement in the Classroom
Faculty members, instructors, and administrators can play an important role in guiding election processing and reflection in a safe and productive manner.
Please check out out resource list below, made up of guides and strategies from institutions and organizations across the country.
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Center for Teaching Excellence
Email: cte@ku.edu | Phone Number: 785-864-4199
The primary purpose of the Center for Teaching Excellence is to build community among faculty members and to help instructors make student learning visible.
Offerings:
Association of American Colleges and Universities
Email: information@aacu.org
AAC&U is the leading national association dedicated to advancing the vitality and public standing of liberal education by making quality and equity the foundations for excellence in undergraduate education in service to democracy.
Offerings:
Braver Angels
Email: info@braverangels.org
A Braver Angels Debate is a different kind of debate in which a group of people think together, listen carefully to one another, and allow themselves to be touched and perhaps changed by each other’s ideas.
Offerings:
Campus Election Engagement Project
Campus Election Engagement Project (CEEP) is a national nonpartisan project that helps administrators, faculty, staff and student leaders at America’s colleges and universities engage students in federal, state and local elections, working to promote a more equitable and inclusive democracy, and to overcome the ever-changing barriers to voting.
Offerings:
- Campus Civic Discussions: A Nonpartisan Guide
- Difficult Classroom Conversations About Political Issues
- Faculty Resource: Talking About Elections in Your Classrooms
- The Road Ahead: Processing the 2020 Election
- Post-Election Online Announcement for Faculty
- Common Questions After Election Day: A Student Guide
- Coronavirus as a Teachable Classroom Moment: Engaging Students Across the Curriculum
Center for Civic Engagement: James Madison University
Email: civic@jmu.edu | Phone Number: 540-568-7549
As a nonpartisan entity, JMU Civic emphasizes the acquisition of knowledge to make one a more informed participant in our democracy, skills to make one a more effective participant, and values that embrace pluralism, open-mindedness, empathy, respect, diversity and inclusion.
Offerings:
- Facilitating Difficult Election Conversations
- Ben Shahn: Art as Civic Engagement
- Political Identitree: How Social Identities Provide a Lens to Understand Who We Are and the Impact of Our Political Actions
Edward Ginsberg Center for Community Service: University of Michigan
The Ginsberg Center's mission is to cultivate and steward equitable partnerships between communities and the University of Michigan in order to advance social change for the public good.
Offerings:
Faculty Network for Student Voting Rights
Email: facnet@facultyforvotingrights.org
The Faculty Network is a coalition of faculty across U.S. institutions dedicated to equipping students with the tools and education to vote in November 2020 and beyond.
Offerings:
Institute for Democracy and Higher Education: Tufts University
Email: idhe@tufts.edu | Phone Number: 617-627-3453
The Institute for Democracy & Higher Education (IDHE) was founded to address a pressing need in higher education. U.S. colleges and universities have long worked to fulfil their civic missions, but they have yet to meet the expectation that learning about and participation in democracy pervades every student’s learning experience.
Offerings:
- Elections Imperatives 2020: A Time of Physical Distancing and Social Action
- Facilitating Political Discussions: A Facilitator Training Workshop Guide
- Last Call for Democracy: A Message to College and University Leaders
- Memorandum to Higher Education Leaders: Fall 2020 Voting Conditions
- Only Days Left until the 2020 Election Ends. There’s Still Time to Act. Here’s How.
- Report: Readiness for Discussing Democracy in Supercharged Political Times
Living Room Conversations
A Living Room Conversation is a simple way to heal divides. It is a conversational model developed by dialogue experts in order to facilitate connection between people despite their differences, and even identify areas of common ground and shared understanding.
Offerings:
- Political Peace Building Conversation Guide
- Coronavirus- Upcoming Election in the Time of Corona Conversation Guide
- The Golden Rule in Politics Conversation Guide
- Wave the Social Fabric Conversation Guide
- Politics and Personal Relationships Conversation Guide
- American Creed Conversation Guide
- Politics- Can We Talk? Converastion Guide
- United or Divided? Conversation Guide
- Anxiety and the Election Conversation Guide
- Polarization Conversation Guide
- 2020 Election- Concerns and Aspirations Conversation Guide
- Democracy, Extremism, and Outliers Conversation Guide
- What are American Values/Ideals? Conversation Guide
National Institute for Civil Discourse
Email: nicd@arizona.edu | Phone Number: 202-759-9302
NICD is a non-partisan organization based at the University of Arizona to promote healthy and civil political debate.
Offerings:
Project Pericles
Email: projectpericles@projectpericles.org | Phone Number: 212-986-4496
Project Pericles is a national consortium of 30 colleges and universities committed to including participatory citizenship and social responsibility as essential elements of their educational programs.
Offerings:
- Creating Cohesive Pathways to Civic Engagement
- Debating for Democracy
- Deliberative Dialogue Discussion
Student Experience Project
The Student Experience Project is committed to transforming the college student experience and creating equitable learning environments through innovative, evidence-based practices that increase degree attainment.
Offerings:
- Creating Identity Safety in the Classroom as the 2020 Election Approaches
- How to Foster Identity Safety in Three Election-Related Scenarios
Students Learn Students Vote Coalition
Email: info@slsv.org
The Students Learn Students Vote (SLSV) Coalition is the national hub and largest nonpartisan network in the United States dedicated to increasing college student voter participation.
- Amanda Kemp: How to Have a Voice and Lean into Conversations About Race
- From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social justice
- Harvard Univerity Graduate School of Education: Teaching in Times of Strife and Trauma
- Ilana Redstone: Beyond Bigots and Snowflakes
- Inside Higher Ed: Avoiding Post-Election Student Unrest
- Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice: What is Critical Literacy?
- OneHE: Community Building Activities
- POD Network: Resources for Supporting Our Campuses in Politically Fraught Times
- Scholars Strategy Network: How Faculty Can Prepare to Handle the Post-Election Classroom
- Teaching Civic Engagement Across the Disciplines: The Politically Engaged Classroom
- The New York Times: Teach and Learn with the 2020 Election
- University of Michigan Museum of Art: Dialogue Deck- A Conversation Exercise for Political Reflection
- University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching: Guidelines for Discussing Difficult of High-Stakes Topics
- University of Michigan Ginsberg Center: Civic Learning Activities
- Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching: Teaching in Response to the Election
These resources were curated from a number of sources, including this article about post-election resources, newsletters from the Institute of Democracy & Higher Education, and communications from the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition.