This semester I took the plunge and completed my first C3 lesson with my government class. I designed the inquiry as part of a summer curriculum project last July for our social studies department in Fairfax County. (You can find it here: To What Extent Do Americans Distrust the Process for Making Public Policy?)
At our high school, West Potomac in Alexandria, VA., the government students must complete community service hours and write a policy paper. In the past I had always found it difficult to link these in students’ minds to what we were learning in class. This time I did not have that problem! Of course I was also helped along quite a bit by current events. I teach two sections of honors Government to 49 students. In one class there are 30 students and in the other 19, so it’s a bit lopsided. We spent three days discussing the compelling question.
For the C3 Inquiry Design Model, the compelling question is subdivided into three more detailed and specific supporting questions for student inquiry. In our IDM, the compelling question “To what extent do Americans distrust the policy making process,” came out of the discussion by the candidates and the media during the election of 2016, when many referred to it as being a “rigged system.” I wanted the students to be able to discuss this in the context of the election but also in the framework of our class’ curriculum.
I added the models of policy-making, often taught in college but not in high school. I used my experiences from teaching AP Comparative Government to inform our discussions. On the first day we discussed how policy is made in the United States by analyzing the different theoretical models. I thought this would be dry and boring but the kids liked this lesson a lot. It generated quite a bit of questions but also laughter and engagement, which is always good!
On the second day the kids focused on the second question: “What influence do wealth, the media and interest groups have on the process?” This was largely review for the kids as we had spent three weeks of class during our election unit examining this already. On the third day we had a debate focused around the question “How valid is the distrust of the policy making process?” Of course in a debate the proposition has to be a statement instead of a question. We used: Americans distrust the process for making public policy.
On the first day, we discussed different ways of thinking about policy making. In other words, we looked at the wonky and completely esoteric ways college professors think about the policy-making process. In the lesson, the kids are given various policy models and asked to illustrate them. They LIKED doing this much to my surprise. They had many questions, leading to a lively conversation. A few of them seemed to think these were real, tangible things — like objects rather than mental constructs, but we got past that.

On the second day they had to read a lot of articles about media influences, money, and interest groups. So, they were a bit reluctant to start. BUT the formative assessment activity at the end – the “Minute Paper” – really woke them up. A Minute Paper asks the student to write for one minute about the topic of the article.
I ended up having them read everything instead of just one article and then exchanging information. Afterwards we ended up with four separate Minute writes. One was for their overall thoughts on the three influences, mostly because many students felt so frustrated at not having done well on the first one. Most of them managed about one sentence for the first one and then more for the second and third. They voiced their frustrations by talking about all the things they had wanted to write down, so I could tell they understood the material. They all complained that they had MUCH more to say and many questions. “GOOD”, I thought, because when they came back from lunch I divided them into debate teams.

On day three, the debate framework worked well. However, there were too many absent students in one of my classes which impacted the performance of one of the teams. In the other class while some students had not taken their homework very seriously, we ended up with an effective debate. The consensus of the class at the end in both cases was that the policy process works and they are glad they live in America. Quite a few of them had attended various marches or protests in the DC area and in Atlanta recently and written letters or contacted their elected officials and brought this up during the debate – or talked about their parents doing the above – which surprised me a bit.
The Taking Informed Action task at the end was also a success. Students made posters to illustrate the UN Sustainable Development Goals to hang up around the school. My reason for choosing this to do at the end given their debate results was so that they could practice engagement in the policy process. They understood protest and marching, even letters to their elected officials but they still needed to see that they could do something themselves to make a difference. Something concrete.
Many students participate in community service but they didn’t see the connection between that and policy-making. In this case the poster informs about the issue they care about and has concrete actions a person can take to make a difference


The next day the policy paper project was introduced and the homework was to choose a topic and find five sources. A number of students got their topics FROM the poster making assignment. A number of them came to class and reported writing letters and emails and planning to go to marches. I have been handing out service hours where in previous years it was always a slog to get them involved.
I feel like the C3 Inquiry was a success but there may be a few things I will do differently in future:
- Timing: the end of the quarter is a BAD time for this.
- The intro videos and other resources: I updated them for my second class to include current events rather than the sources for half a year ago.
- The debate: I think the absenteeism is not something I can anticipate well but maybe a little more prep time during class before starting the debate on the day of the debate. I plunged right in.
Final thoughts
The C3 Inquiry led to a redesign of my third quarter assignments. When I asked the kids if they thought it was a good lesson they replied that they did. Hopefully they were not just being nice. They requested more debates but on the policies they care about. (Specifically they said we should have tests like this more often and not just multiple choice all the time).
So I passed around a clipboard and asked everyone to contribute a debate topic. The 5 most popular ones I put on a poll they could do on their cellphones at: https://www.polleverywhere.com. As a result we are having two debates in March: one at the beginning and one at the end. The subject of the first one is whether the government should pay for college tuition. The second one covers discrimination and prejudice in public school. The students all picked their paper topics and began researching them as well.
Because of the political climate, this is the first year I have taught this with the required policy paper that students had no trouble picking their topics without my help. The posters are up in the library and people are reading them and commenting on them. Last week I was attending a workshop in the library where the posters are with other teachers from West Potomac and other schools. Some of them asked about the posters and I was very proud to tell them that my students had made them.
I will definitely repeat this lesson next year. Currently I am looking on the website for other C3 lessons to attempt. I am also planning to encourage my colleagues to give it a try next year.