Connecting Service and Politics
Example (Third Year) Training, Enrichment & Reflection
Overview: Activities and Reflections presented Chronologically and seeking First Year Student Development.
Group Reflection:
Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 189ff.
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To begin discussing essential elements to democratic nations: equality and liberty, as well as the relationship between the two and all their tension and complexity. Students will further develop problem-solving and leadership skills by assessing the goals of not only the larger democratic process but community partners and individual service.
- "I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion Is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism; but they will not endure aristocracy,” (p. 8).
Democracy in America.doc
Third Year Goal: For students to begin taking on leadership positions in their program, on their campus and in their community. Further, for these students to begin to understand the underlying causes of problems theirs and other communities face and what they can do to help alleviate those problems through policy action. Emphasis should be put on the fact that voting is a huge right in the United States and that the Get Out The Vote workshop and implementation are huge ways in which participants can increase civic engagement not only on campus, but in the community as well.
First Set of Activities
Citizenship Rights
Same sequence as in previous years, implemented by Junior Level Bonners.
Group Reflection:
The future of Democracy, "The Ethics of Civic Engagement," Peter Levine, 7ff.
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To be truly effective problem-solvers, engaged citizens must have the skills to assess the ethics of particular civic engagement and political action. This reflection focuses on opening a dialogue about the proper avenues to social change.
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“An adequate definition [of civic engagement] should say something about means as well as ends...I now suggest that to be civically engaged is to enhance the commons or to influence state distribution and regulation in ways that benefit the underlying political structure.” p. 7-8.
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Second Set of Activities
Learning Circles
Same sequence as in previous years, implemented by Junior Year Bonners.
Third Set of Activities
Get Out The Vote
As a higher level training, this activity guides participants on how to implement voter drives and voter registration on their campuses. It is also a great tool to understanding youth voting and how to increase the numbers of youth participants turning out to the polls in elections.
Activity 1 Introduction to Get Out the Vote in 3 Parts(Suggested time for each: 20 minutes)
This activity, broken into three parts, will educate participants on statistics about voting: Youth vote, Race and voting, etc; It begins with a game, modeled after the Price is Right, continues on to creating an asset map of voting stats on campus and in the community and ends by having the participants brainstorm ways in which they can increase voter turnout. By the end of the three activities, the focus will be on how they, the participants, can increase voter turnout, primarily in their community.
Activity 2 Running a Voter Registration Drive (suggested time:as much as needed)
This activity involves participants preparing for and actually running a voter registration drive. Not only should it be done on campus, but in the community as well.
Activity 3 Voter Education (suggested time: as much time as needed)
This activity gets participants prepared for voter education forums or to prepare information that can be dispersed to people throughout their campus and community regarding all candidates for all issues. Note, does not just have to be done during a presidential election. There are local elections that are vitally important as well and there should be education on those issues as well.
Fourth Set of Activities
Planning a Meeting
This higher level activity will engage participants in training on how to plan and implement a meeting. Going along with the developmental model of connecting service and politics, this training should be used to plan meetings with community partners, government agencies, campus faculty and active students.
Activity 1 Warm Up (suggested time: 15-20 minutes)
This activity will have students first recalling what makes meetings NOT work, so as to go ahead later on and make sure to not implement those steps when planning a meeting.
Activity 2Meeting Planning Steps(suggested time: 40-60 minutes)
This activity will have participants begin to understand the best way in which to go about planning a meeting. It will prepare them for the last activity, which is to plan an actual meeting.
Activity 3 Planning an Actual Meeting (suggested time: 40-60 minutes)
Steps to planning an effective meeting and have participants work on plalning an actual meeting.