Week 1 Discussion 2 - Preparing Students for Citizenship

If we accept the fact that we may need to focus more on teaching civic responsibility, how can this work with both "policies and people" in the school where you become principal?

Ideally, the focus of teaching civic responsibility comes from a partnership between policies and people.  The article “No Excuses: Eleven Schools and Districts that Make Preparing Students for Citizenship a Priority and Others Can Do It, Too” outlines the need for teaching civic responsibilities and how certain schools are already leading the way.  The chart printed in the article showing the correlation between policies and people helps me as a future principal focus on ways to implement policies teaching civic responsibility and the people required to ensure they are effective.  

How will you lead your staff in this part of the curriculum?

I would form a committee of teachers who were passionate about teaching students civic responsibility and would first come up with new policies that could be implemented.  Having a committee of teachers would begin the process of having excellent and enthusiastic leaders share their vision of teaching.  Recognizing as a principal my role in this venture, and hopefully having creative and dedicated teachers share this vision of the importance of civil learning would give opportunities for growth.