Introduction
During a civics lesson one of my students suddenly looked at me with a puzzled look and immediately shot her hand into the air. She excitedly asked a series of hurried questions, "So…what is power? I mean, what is it really? Is it real?" I paused. I didn't really know how to answer her questions. I decided it would be best to approach her questions with questions of my own. I asked, "Well, what do you think it is? When have you experienced power?" She was still confused, but she thought for a moment, then carefully explained, "Power is when someone can make you do something, when someone changes you." I was excited by her insight, especially since she was only eleven years old. I then opened up the discussion to the rest of the class by talking about instances of power in our classroom, school, and city. Power isn't concrete and tangible; it is abstract and changes depending on the situation and time period. Our social contract is not easily detected. This is my challenge in teaching this topic.
With this unit, I seek to clear up some misconceptions students have about why governments are created and the role of our government. During the same discussion I asked, "Why does the government make and enforce laws?"and a few students responded that governments are created to "punish people." They elaborated on this idea by saying that creating consequences for breaking laws is the sole reason why our government exists. This misconception is commonly held by the students year after year. In conversations with other teachers, they have reported some similar misconceptions in regards to the purpose of government. This unit, which includes the graphic novel The Girl Who Owned a City, will give me an effective plan of action that will allow my students to thoroughly make the invisible concepts of power and social contract visible.
My school, like schools all over the country, serves a diverse population of students. Skyline Middle School serves students from Pike Creek and Wilmington in northern Delaware, where I teach four sections of sixth-grade social studies. The students come from diverse backgrounds and cultural groups, including African American, Asian American, Caucasian, Hispanic, and low income. This diversity poses challenges in planning and implementing lessons to meet the needs of each child. It is, therefore, imperative that my lessons are student-centered and employ a variety of teaching strategies as each class period is sixty minutes in length.
In my school district, we are required to follow the Delaware Recommended Curriculum. For social studies, units have been created for most of the Delaware content standards to ensure the rigor of the classroom discussions, activities, and assessments in achieving the standard. There is currently no unit for the civics standard I am required to teach. The standard states, "Students will understand that governments have the power to make and enforce laws and regulations, levy taxes, conduct foreign policy, and make war." The essential question for this standard is, "Why does a government have certain powers?" My unit of study focuses on the first part of the standard, why governments are given power by their citizens. I want the students to understand that people engage in a social contract to form a government that protects the rights of individuals. In addition, the citizens agree to give up some of their personal freedoms to ensure that society is orderly and to protect their rights.
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