Rationale
If a stranger were to ask one of my students if the president of the United States could do whatever he wished in regards to running the government, their answer would surely be yes. This unit will outline the powers of the president and present to students the fact that the president is not all powerful and must have many acts approved. I have been teaching 8 th grade civics and economics for four years at Fred D. Thompson Middle school which is located in Richmond, Virginia. Thompson is an inner-city school with a 97% African American population and is recognized by the federal government as a Title I school based on the poverty rating. Over the years as a civics teacher, it seems that my students have struggled to grasp the concepts of what exactly a president is and what that position has the power to do. In attempts to rejuvenate my love for teaching I decided on applying for this program. Keeping my students in mind I applied for the seminar on The American Presidency so I could develop a curriculum unit that would finally allow for my students to link the primary documents that led to the creation of the executive branch with the powers that the president has. When it comes to my students choosing who they believe is a good president or a bad president, they often say what they hear from their parents, family, community, or the television. For the most part, my students seem to have very conservative view points but often believe they are liberal because that is what is normal in their community. If a stranger were to ask my students why they believe a person is a good or bad president, or whom they would vote for in an upcoming presidential election, they often will revert to one of following two answers: "I don't know," or they will answer with something they heard from a peer, adult or media source. As a teacher, I do not try to steer my students toward a specific political party, but I am trying to create informed citizens who will participate in the election process when they come of age.
My students have shown deficiency in building on previous knowledge to connect with new information. I can relate to my students' inability to connect new and old topics because of the experiences that I had in middle and high school. I struggled with connecting the concepts from lessons my teachers taught because I was either too easily distracted to grasp the concepts or my teachers did not relate the information in a way that was easy to decipher. I am creating this unit in an attempt to alleviate the stressfulness for me and my students of having to re-teach the same concept three times for my students to conceptualize it. I am also creating this unit for my students. I often achieved a C in even my favorite subjects like government and history. I look back now at my teachers in the past and wish they were able to help me connect the dots so I would enjoy the content, have more invested in it, and achieve a higher grade.
One of the most difficult things for my students to understand is why primary documents such as The Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution are all related. After my students are taught the earlier primary documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, they are left wondering what makes these documents relevant to the current government (the United States Constitution) if we do not use them anymore. Students often disregard the documents after being taught.
The first part of this unit will take a look at how the primary documents that we study were all built off of one another and answer the problems left by the preceding document. This unit will teach students that our government under the United States Constitution has a system of checks and balances. The reasoning for checks and balances will be learned by analyzing the British monarchy and the Articles of Confederation for they were the governing powers of this country but they lacked a balance of power.
After examining the United States Constitution, students will get a closer look at the struggle the Framers had with creating the executive branch, and how they took careful steps to avoid an absolute executive. This will end the students' false sense that the president can do what he wants. This unit will allow students to see what different jobs the president fulfills as the executive of the national government. The second part of the unit will take a look at how media shapes the perception of presidential candidates. The students I teach can often let you know if they like or dislike a president or a presidential candidate, but when asked why they feel that way they often do not have a justifiable answer. This unit will address three presidential elections in which students will observe the growth of different types of media and how the winning candidate utilized those means. My students will learn how to evaluate the early forms of campaigning and will grow just as the forms of campaigning did with the development of the media. Students will learn how to separate fact from opinion, detect bias, evaluate the source, and identify whether something is propaganda. This approach will allow for students to grow as critical thinkers by starting off with the more basic forms of media before moving on to the next form of media. After studying these political debates, students will have witnessed the transformation of media and how it allowed political parties to flourish keeping in mind the original intent of the Framers of the constitution.
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