Practicing Civic Skills

The Civic Spirit Student Delegates have begun identifying civic-related issues in their schools and taking the first steps to develop projects that address these themes.

This process allows them to practice urgent skills of BRAINSTORMING and PROBLEM-SOLVING, which are needed to maintain a thriving, productive self-governing democracy.

Their first step was to use the “How Might We” (HMW) exercise from Design Thinking, a form of brainstorming that is often used in the tech space.

Students are asked to answer the following questions.

  1. I’ve noticed (CONCERN) in my school…
  2. How might we (ACTION) to address this problem?

Here are some of the Delegates’ beautiful ideas:

Example #1:

  1. We have noticed that some students view student government and the student elections process as meaningless.
  2. How much we make student elections relevant and important for each student?
  3. How can we get the school involved in helping us make this change, so that it is permanent and not only for a year?

Example #2:

  1. We have noticed that Sephardic (non-European Jewish) students are not adequately represented on billboards, posters, and promotional videos from our school?
  2. How might we create a better sense of involvement in our community so that we can account for all students, and not just a small percentage?

Example #3:

  1. We have noticed that the students in our school, especially juniors and seniors, feel a lot of stress and anxiety which can lead to chronic stress which affects both mental and physical health.
  2. How can we create a stress-free yet academically challenging school environment?