Election 2020: 11 Ways to Engage Students From Now Until November

Though election news will dominate the headlines all summer, the global pandemic has thrown into question everything from how the candidates will campaign to whether there will be live conventions to how we’ll vote in November.

Whether your students will be in school in the fall, learning at home or experiencing some kind of hybrid, we have ideas for how they can get involved now and stay involved until November — and, perhaps, cope with feelings of helplessness during this crisis as they do.

A recent Washington Post Opinion piece by two education professors argues that, right now, teenagers are learning “profound civics lessons” as they watch Washington respond to the Covid-19 crisis. We don’t have to convince them that what happens in politics affects their lives — they’re seeing the evidence of that every day. As the essay puts it:

The coronavirus pandemic lays bare two major weaknesses in traditional approaches to teaching civics and history — what students are expected to learn and how we measure that learning. Too often, these subjects are taught as a barrage of isolated facts disconnected from the realities young people face daily.

The essay goes on to recommend approaches that encourage young people to “lean into the discrepancies they see between civic ideals and their civic realities.” This summer, we’ll be working on a suite of ideas that we hope can help do just that.

As we plan for the fall, we invite you to share with us how you plan to bring the election, and the issues at stake in November, into your own classroom. We’d also like to hear from you how The Learning Network can help.