Acting Like a Citizen: Beyond the Voting Booth

Recently, I clicked a link on my Facebook feed that said it was a list of easy ways to de-stress your life. Seemed like a good idea for me. Nothing on there was too unexpected, but many of them I refuse to do. One was to give up coffee. No.

Another non-negotiable was the suggestion to stop watching the news. Though I can’t disagree with the logic – no one would argue with this being a particularly tense year – there is zero chance that I would ever turn off the news. If anything, I have increased my consumption of it in the past few months. In my lifetime, I have never felt it to be more pressing than it is now to be a well-informed and active citizen. But what does that look like?

This question greatly informed my approach going into my summer with Kentucky’s Governor’s Scholars Program. As I wrote in my post from last month, the third C of the C3, preparing students for civic life, was my main focus.

For both classes, we began our summer together by creating a community ball (directions as to how to make one can be found here). As they created this ball, they answered the question “When is a time you acted as a citizen?” As 16/17 year olds, none could discuss their voting record. I decided to make my contribution last so as to not impact their responses. For the most part, it felt like they were reading me their application for the program: discussing volunteer work they had done through their school. Obviously, this is good citizenship, but I wanted to expand their view of participation in civic life.

As the conversations developed, they revealed that students felt isolated from the current political climate and desperately wanted things to be different. When pushed as to why they don’t attempt to do anything, all said they felt powerless to impact change.

This is why the taking informed action piece of the C3 is especially powerful. It allows us momma birds to gently push students out of the nest, while still maintaining a watchful eye.

Some fellow faculty members jumped on this need to give our students a sense of agency and arranged for an all student-led panel to be held to discuss current racial issues, open to the entire program. Those who participated chose to do so – they researched to prepare and understand various facets of the issue, assessed which topics were of particular interest to their audience, and took action by holding this forum. They certainly varied in their opinions, but nonetheless maintained a respectful atmosphere.

As our time together was coming to a close, I wanted to end the classes similarly to how they had begun. I posed the question: “in what ways will you act as a citizen?”

This was not the time for them to list those grandiose ideas…they knew I wouldn’t believe them. Some of their ideas were so big that I have my doubts that they will even attempt them. Others reflected the actions of active, participatory citizens. Just like New Years Resolutions, I told them vague promises to “inform others” wouldn’t fly. How would they inform others? This led to less abstract discussions of citizenship to specific ways they could take action in their schools.

In terms of current event topics we discussed, no stone was left unturned. The student forum only highlighted one issue, but showed them they could have influence – to act like citizens in their future lives beyond the first Tuesday in November.