Leveraging your ignorance to benefit students

Guest Post By Charles Cooper Our world is surrounded by mystery. We seek out limits to our knowledge when watching movies, reading dystopian books, and even as we converse with friends. The mysterious, framed the right way, compels us to … Continue reading →

Separation of Powers Activity Using The Cranium Board Game

I’m pretty sure that, like many of you, I was gamifying stuff before it was a “thing”.  If I got bored teaching the same thing in the same way year after year, I couldn’t imagine what my poor students were … Continue reading →

The Day My Students Embarrassed Me (Constitutional Convention Lesson Attached)

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They’re all going to laugh at you! The day my students embarrassed me is also the day I became a better educator (and friend, and father, and husband… and I’m not kidding). Bear with me and my ego for just … Continue reading →

Student Created Tutorials

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I was looking over some old lessons from my high school government class and came across some “stuff”.  I’ll be posting this “stuff” today and tomorrow. To begin the parade is this list of resources that I used to get … Continue reading →

I don’t want to be a teacher anymore.

Etymologically speaking, I’d rather be an educator 🙂 Nourushing, rearing and training sounds a lot better than showing, pointing and training. Dogs get trained…kids shouldn’t.

Revisiting Federalist X

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When I first came to the United States from Costa Rica in 1980 I was intimidated by everything I saw.  Especially here in Texas, everything seemed bigger and better than what I had experienced in San Jose.  It was, to … Continue reading →

If Machiavelli Taught Gerrymandering/Redistricting

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This activity is similar to the “Hobbes Game” in that it makes friends into enemies…and I SOOOO enjoy that 🙂  However, there are lots of moving pieces which can make this a complicated task.  Once you get the jist of … Continue reading →

Federalism: A Tug of War

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This is from a handout I pass to my students in class during our federalism unit.  Because gay marriage is such a “hot” topic here in Texas, I decided to combine federalism with this partifular topic.  Students are always asked … Continue reading →

U.S. Government Demographics Project

One of my favorite and most challenging assignments for my students is the demographics project that covers quite a few chapters in both my regular government class as well as my college classes. I’ll forgo the in depth explanation since … Continue reading →

What Is A Right: The Declaration’s Teleological Argument

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The US Constitution doesn’t know what it’s defending. It claims to protect individual rights, but that term is never defined within the four corners of the document. Rights are, however, more closely addressed in the Declaration of Independence. Here’s a … Continue reading →