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Civic Participation & Citizenship Collection

NELRC

Studying the Constitution
Tara O'Brien, Vermont Adult Learning, Brattleboro

The current Civics and Citizenship Course is the first that has been held at VAL. Previously, interested students were individually tutored at our center or traveled to Greenfield, Massachusetts to study for citizenship in a formal classroom. In the summer of 2000, VAL students signed a petition asking for more input into the course availability and content. In a subsequent school survey, the students indicated the classes they would like to have at their own center. Citizenship classes were indicated as a high choice amongst the intermediate and advanced students. This is reflected in the level of students in the present class.

The five women currently enrolled in the course have all tested at the advanced level on the Basic English Sills Test (BEST). They represent five different countries and socioeconomic demographics, and moreover, are at different stages in the process of preparing for the citizenship test. Three are married to Americans and would like to take the test at some point, but are at different stage of residency requirements. One is a student who is awaiting her green card, and wants to learn more about the history of the United States and be more active in the community. The last student has no current desire to take the exam but is interested in exploring educational opportunities and the ideals of civic duty. Despite the differences that the students bring to the course, there are similarities which bind them: all the women are well-educated, are extremely articulate, have worked with children and/or education, and have distinctly strong personalities. They bring this experience into each and every class as they explore the ideals of civic duty. This is also reflected in the direction that they have brought the class in exploring, planning, and executing civic oriented projects while studying the history of the United States in this course.

The course is titled "Civics and Citizenship" and has had the dual objectives of learning content information for the citizenship examination and exploring the concept of civic duty through the process of executing community projects. The latter is the primary focus, as practicing and developing skills in such decision making processes is tantamount to ESOL students' success as they function in workplaces and other social situations. In the initial class, students were given the course description and objectives. All classes have tried to address both objectives. Students' interest in completing a project this semester has been high and, consequently, much class time has been spent on choosing and planning a project that would be generated to address their concerns. I have introduced information about the test into that process.

Needs Assessment
In the initial lessons, we had explored the ideals of community in a series of activities agreed upon by the New England Citizenship Project. During the first class and in wake of the September 11 incident, the students voiced concerns regarding their rights as immigrants. Thus, I chose the Constitution as a starting point for this course in order to identify rights of citizens and immigrants. In a previous class, the students worked with a KWL chart on which they compiled a list of items that they knew and wanted to learn about the Constitution. The students stated that they knew the following:
     • The Constitution states the rights of citizens,
     • There are about 13 amendments,
     • The Constitution guarantees equal justice,
     • The Constitution outlines government for the people,
     • The Constitution is about freedom,
     • The Constitution contains the Bill of Rights,
     • The Constitution outlines a democratic state,
     • The Constitution outlines the rules to elect a president, and
     • The Constitution outlines rules for government.

Questions that the students raised were as follows:
     • How many articles are there?
     • What do the amendments guarantee?
     • What are the rights?
     • How does something become a right?
     • How are children involved/protected by the Constitution?
     • How are foreign-born nationals considered?
     • How do you apply the Constitution to those who are not citizens?
     • What is the difference between federal, state and local jurisdiction?
     • Particularly, how are VT laws different/same from other states?

Based on these questions, we studied the structure of The Constitution, The Preamble, and The Bill of Rights in two subsequent classes. However, in order for the students to further apply their working knowledge of the rights, I planned to continue to study Constitutional rights as the objective for the following lesson.

The Lesson
The lesson started late as we awaited the attendance of all members. In the interim and in the interest of time, I chose to change the lesson plan to begin with the project rather than the Constitution review as planned. At this point in the course, the students had chosen a newsletter or an event as probable projects. (They had eliminated various possibilities that included volunteering at an adult care home, starting student advisory boards, holding an educational forum on cultural differences, amongst others.) In previous classes, the Bolivian woman felt strongly about some type of newsletter that would help others. The other students also concurred that they wanted to use their language ability to inform other students about services at the school, while also informing the community at large about our cultural differences and our existence.

As three of the students had studied the weighing of pros and cons as a decision-making strategy before, I decided to use such a chart to further narrow our choice. Those students explained "pros" and "cons" to their peers, and then the group identified their concerns ("cons") - time and financial constraints - about writing a newsletter. Many thoughts were further discussed regarding the length of the newsletter. The Kazakh woman offered her suggestion that to be a good newsletter; it should be at least 20 pages at length, adding to the cons. However, all the women agreed that print was the best mode to reach others in the community. Throughout this discussion it became apparent that more specific goals and objectives would be needed before we continued on the project. Students were asked to come up with specific objectives for homework.

We transitioned to the content of the course. We reviewed the first ten amendments, which we had studied in the previous class. The students picked up index cards, on which a description of the rights were printed, but not the titles of those rights. They were asked to randomly choose a card and appropriately label it with the title. Students also discussed examples of each right, including the freedom of speech and their ability to write and distribute a newsletter (1st). The most current and interesting example was of the constitutionality of the possible arrest of Osama bin Ladin (5th). I provided the historical background and reasoning for the corresponding amendments. This activity was planned with the added objective of improving social dynamics of the group: as one of the most vocal of the group had been absent, the review gave the others the opportunity to summarize content and use more "talk-time" than usual.

In presenting new material about Supreme Court cases which challenged the constitutionality of various laws, I used an overhead to show the graphic "Mapp versus Ohio" taken from website: www.tourolaw.edu/patch/chart.html. (I chose this particular slide because in our previous lesson on the Bill of Rights, the 4th Amendment discussion was enhanced by a personal story by one participant.) Students were shown a summary of the case, asked its importance, and then asked which amendment was being interpreted (see attached slide). The students were able to articulate the importance of this case and could also give examples of how a criminal act could also be protected, as in the case of Mapp versus Ohio.

Next, the students, working in pairs, were to research other court cases that would involve using their knowledge of the Bill of Rights. Rather than group random pairs, I assigned certain students to work together. This pairing was controlled and based on complementary communication styles of the students. However, students chose their own case study to research. There were four cards to choose from, all corresponding to rights previously introduced in class:
     • Escabedo versus Illinois (5th, 6th, and 14th)
     • Gideon versus Wainright (6th and 14th)
     • Engel versus Vitale (1st)
     • Miranda versus Arizona (5th, 6th, and 14th)

All four cases were listed on the www.tourolaw.edu/patch/chart.html website, which I found in a simple MSN search. I had erroneously assumed that the students would use the same search engine that would lead them to these sites. One pair easily found the Hazelwood site and speedily completed the information on the sheet. However, another pair used a different search engine and consequently took more than 30 minutes to find some material reading through information on various websites.

The worksheet that accompanied the activity was also used to control and focus the activity. It included the following questions.
     • What is the case that you researched?
     • When did it occur?
     • What did it involve?
     • Why was it important?
     • What right did it protect?
     • What are the pros and cons of this case?

We finished the class sharing what information the students found (see attached) and with a discussion on the process of having our rights protected by the Supreme Court as in the cases researched. The students again were able to articulate that the amendments can be used to "give some criminals a chance to get away from punishment."

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