Written by GC New England Civic Learning Support Specialist Jayson Joyce

A 2023 study by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars found that, compared with the nationwide baseline, Gen Z citizens were 20% less likely to plan on voting in the election and 20% more likely to plan on complete nonparticipation. At the time of this study, a whopping 33% had already decided to sit out, solidifying this next generation of citizens – those eligible to vote for this first time this November and those who will become eligible during the next presidential administration – as the most apathetic group of Americans.

The trend has not gone unnoticed, and several states have mandated civics education as a means to combat this disengagement and to prepare young Americans for citizenship. 

However, not all civics education programs are created equal. 

Community-based civics projects, which require real-world engagement, can meet the needs our students have in this unique historical moment. Generation Citizen, a leading national nonpartisan nonprofit organization in this space, provides teachers who engage in community-based civics with curricula and coaching around learning that is project-based, student-centered, and culturally responsive. After completing a project, 92% of students report having developed the skills necessary to participate in public life, and–perhaps more importantly – 81% report that they believe they can make a difference in the public square. 

Jerry Acosta, an 11th-grade teacher in Lawrence, Massachusetts, facilitated Generation Citizen projects in his classes this spring. What started as a somewhat anxiety-inducing component to squeeze in between his WWII and Civil Rights units ended up as an unforgettable experience for Mr. Acosta, his students, and the larger communities they inhabit. By the end of their Generation Citizen experience, they were able to get the Mayor of Lawrence to sign not one, but two of Jerry’s students’ proposals into law. 

For the kind of transformational civics education that the Lawrence students received, the classroom was simply too small; when their education expanded to fill a community, the apathy that typifies so much of Gen Z’s political views was replaced by passionate, strategic engagement. 

Interviews with Mr. Acosta, two of his students, and the Lawrence City Councilor who partnered with two of his classes reveal 10 reasons why we have to think outside the classroom to provide exceptional civics education for students. 

1. Community-Based Civics fights civic apathy among students.

Students in Mr. Acosta’s classes are entering the twelfth year of state receivership, a scenario that can stifle the sense of teacher and student agency. While a bureaucratic morass may feel unmovable, the students in the project started closer to their day-to-day experience; each class had to come to a consensus about which issue they were going to focus on for this project. Rather than majority-take-all, Mr. Acosta led his students in a multiclass process utilizing various strategies to build buy-in from all of his students. 

At the start of the process, Baloma – an 11th-grader – stood alone in one corner of the room, advocating that the class tackle rampant littering and trash in the street. With each new class period in the “consensus building” part of the process, she convinced more and more of her peers to leave their corners of the room and join her. She had to do ‘extra’ research and be prepared to persuade each day, and despite the superfluous work, it “was worth it.” She had succeeded in convincing her 6th Period History class that littering in Lawrence “affected [their] community more than” some of the hot-button issues her classmates initially wanted to work on.

2. Community-Based Civics increases student engagement and confidence.

Another student in Mr. Acosta’s class said that the community-based civics component of the class was different because “everybody works together, and everybody’s talking to each other, and it’s more inclusive.” Yebriana reported that she typically was not one of those students who raised their hand and participated in class discussions, but something about engaging in “real issues” brought out a different part of her personality. She said that she learned that “even the quietest kid can be the loudest voice” for advocacy. 

3. Community-Based Civics puts the cognitive and practical work on students.

When interviewed about his successes in bringing his students from building a classroom consensus around the problem of litter to the point of bill-signing, Mr. Acosta is hesitant to accept any credit, saying he worked more as a guide and connector in a project that belonged to his students. He led his students in a root cause analysis that would lead to systemic change around their chosen issue, and they decided that the problem was a lack of available trash receptacles. After that, the students began reaching out to city workers and elected officials. 

City Council President Jeovanny Rodriguez reported receiving dozens of emails from Lawrence High School students about myriad issues. He reached out to Mr. Acosta about collaborating around the litter initiative, as he was considering a proposal to require small business owners to have a regularly emptied trash can on the premises. The teacher put his student leaders in touch with the Council President, who encouraged them to come testify in front of the Council about their ideas. 

4. Community-Based Civics builds community.

Mr. Acosta inspired eight students to come with him to testify on the first of three occasions, in which the teenagers would wait their turn for hours in the chambers to speak their piece. He said he would help edit their testimony, but that they must be the ones doing most of the preparation and presentation before the elected officials. 

The Councilors treated them with true respect, not kid gloves, and asked them what the business community thought about their proposal. When the students had no clear answer, they left the chambers with (more!) homework: engaging all the stakeholders to build a coalition behind their proposal. Council President Rodriguez stayed in touch with the students and teacher in between sessions, guiding them in how to determine specifics for a policy proposal.

5. Community-Based Civics provides students with transferable skills.

As the weeks of the spring semester went by, Mr. Acosta’s students – both those working on this trash initiative and those from his other classes working on other issues – utilized a wide variety of skills as they honed their proposals. Students made PowerPoint presentations, solicited historical data from the Police Department, canvassed neighbors, interviewed business owners, and prioritized the actionables among their classmates, all in addition to their regular coursework. None of their various work steps, from editing emails to officials to measuring the sizes of various trash cans, were purely academic in nature. All of the steps were transferable to future career and organizational endeavors. 

6. Community-Based Civics benefits teachers.

Mr. Acosta readily admits that setting up his classroom after the Generation Citizen summer professional development was “intimidating just because of the sheer volume of what we wanted to get out of the curriculum” before even adding a civics project to it. He says that it was “a little scary” in the first weeks of the project because it was so deeply student-centered and student-paced. However, after “embrac[ing] the chaos” and seeing the projects take shape, he reported a mindset that permeated all of his teaching. 

With transformational teaching, “you have to be uncomfortable, just as we expect our students to…get out of your comfort zone and get out there and do things… As teachers, we need to do the same thing [and] practice what we preach.” This approach clearly paid dividends, as one student said that because of her teacher’s support, “people actually take [us] seriously and hear [our] voices.” 

7. Community-Based Civics benefits elected officials. 

Councilor Rodriguez reported several benefits in collaboration with high school students, from breaking stereotypes to finding innovative ideas. He knew that most students probably thought of councilors as “old people…who weren’t gonna do anything except argue”, but he thought purposeful collaboration, in which he showed them “the process from the beginning to the end”, could change that. In addition to showing students that government could solve problems, he believed he could show his colleagues and “the community that there are a lot of kids that have the potential to change the perspective of the city”. 

After meeting with business owners and three sessions of student testimony, a consensus started to emerge. This collaboration yielded the idea that small business owners receive tax credits for furnishing their businesses with appropriate trash receptacles rather than merely compelling them to do so or spending taxpayer dollars on providing them. Councilor Rodriguez says that he is using Mr. Acosta’s students as an example to anyone – below or above the voting age – as to how to “get from point A to point B on the city council.” 

8. Community-Based Civics teaches by doing.

Ben Franklin allegedly once quipped, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” These Lawrence High School students could have learned civics through traditional, lecture-style recitation of facts. Their English teachers, however, would never teach them grammar mechanics without giving them an opportunity to pen an original essay. Their baseball coaches would never show them film and read them books without giving them a chance to swing the bat themselves. Their history teacher likewise believed experiential learning was the most effective way to teach. 

In choosing this path, he chose to make his students persevere in the endeavor rather than enduring a lesson. Councilor Rodriguez said that there were definitely moments of frustration when the students asked him, “Why are these councilors against us?” and he told them that this was “true government”, nothing was personal, but they needed to find a way to convince five councilors to get to an ordinance. Both Yebriana and Baloma reported that the “late nights at City Hall” and repeated admonitions to “do more research” could be daunting, but ultimately Yebriana said that they were going to “power through this and we’re gonna go through those meetings because this is something that we know can change the city for the better”. 

9. Community-Based Civics provides windows and mirrors. 

At several points in the project, students had the opportunity to see ‘windows’ — a view into someone else’s perspective—and ‘mirrors’—their own experiences reflected. They struggled to understand the obstinate holdout vote or the skeptical business owner, but these empathic acts are foundational in a pluralistic democracy. 

Councilor Rodriguez made sure they had mirrors, too; he emphasized his journey from recent immigrant to council president, and he never wore a suit to the school. One student described her pride in utilizing her Spanish language skills when canvassing stakeholders. 

10. Community-Based Civics develops citizen-leaders

Ultimately, the goal of a great civics education isn’t to create new legislation but to create great citizens. While all parties were excited about Mayor DePeña signing two new ordinances during Lawrence High School’s Civics Day in May, the true fruits of such a pursuit may yet be felt in years to come. Councilor Rodriguez is looking into more paid internships for students after his experience working with LHS.  Mr. Acosta says, “I know the process now, and I can advocate for myself and sit down in City Council meetings without my students and get involved…I wouldn’t have been able to do that without the Civics project.”

With their first successful campaigns under their belts, Yebriana and Baloma are not willing to accept the nonparticipation of some of their generational peers. Why did they spend hours, weeks, and months going above and beyond what their teacher asked? Well, because there was trash in the streets, and nobody “wants to see a bad-looking community.”