Creating Better Citizens

Marri, interim provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and professor of educational studies, as well as Ball State professors from a variety of areas including journalism, educational psychology and multicultural education, according to the Aug. 25, 2022 press release on the project.

Since that announcement, the team has also grown to include Donna Browne, who became the CREATE project director in January, according to the February 2023 newsletter of the project.

Now, the project is nearly seven months in and has already begun to set roots with an online repository for teachers on the CREATE project website, along with professional development seminars in partnership with the Indiana Bar Foundation for teachers to prepare to implement civics into their courses. The project has been partnering with the Indiana Bar Foundation for many of these events.

Roof said he has already seen the influence of the CREATE project. He mentioned getting emails from teachers around the state as many work to meet the new civics requirement.

“I know a teacher in West Lafayette emailed me and said, ‘We have this new class requirement, but we don’t know what to do. Can you share anything?’” Roof said about one email. “Long term, we really want to be there to support and [be] really focused on Muncie but also providing resources statewide for teachers.”

The resources in question are part of the Ball State team’s mission as they, alongside MCS teachers, formulate a curriculum to meet the requirement and beyond.

Marri provides insight on the curriculum. He has been conducting research on the development of actively-engaged, democratic citizens since he was in graduate school in 1999. He said the research has shown a better understanding of economic factors makes you a better citizen.

“For example, in Indiana, we do a lot on solar farms or windmills,” Marri said. “So what are the incentives that people are paying landowners to put that there? What are the costs that are involved, and how does that affect me? How does that affect the electricity rates? There’s a variety of ways that this bill allows for researchers like me to get kids to think about civic engagement.”

Marri’s additional experience as a former high school social studies teacher in California also showed him firsthand the disparities of civic engagement the grant will help to alleviate. He said he noticed how students from lower and moderateincome families, as well as those of color and nonnative English speaking backgrounds, had fewer civic engagement opportunities. Civic engagement is a core part of the CREATE project as it seeks to build opportunities for students to become better citizens from K-12.

“Muncie Community Schools have a lot of challenges, but there’s also a lot of opportunities,” Marri said. “A lot of the teachers and the students are civically engaged. They care about their community, they care about Delaware County and they care about Indiana. And so this is an opportunity to build up on that momentum and improve civic education across subject areas beyond just civic education in social studies, now it’s across all areas.”

The project will implement all aspects of civics, which is often confused for being only related to government. Julie Snider, a social studies teacher and department chair at Muncie Central High School, recalled how many have used the words interchangeably when referring to her classes, including her own mother.

“When I first started teaching government, I remember my mom saying, ‘Oh, you’re gonna be teaching civics,’” Snider said, recalling how she was confused by her mother’s words. “And she said, ‘Well, that’s what they always called it when I was a kid.’ And that was kind of the first time I started looking into what that meant. I thought, ‘That doesn’t go with my government curriculum, that would be something I would have to teach alongside it.’”

Civics are related to being a citizen, which reach into many areas of life from media to science, music to sustainability.

The topics can be covered across many areas and seek to find ways to work with teachers rather than against them; one way they do that is through the implement the curriculum.

“We’ve had a good response,” Snider said. “But we have full plates all the time, especially subjects where they have testing and things like that. Sometimes, they tend to say, ‘I can’t handle more.’ My job has been trying to show them: ‘It’s everything you’re already doing but just doing it in a different way. Giving your kids a choice … have a discussion in your class, talk with them about how to talk and how to disagree with someone in a way that’s civil.’”

Snider also talked about the new civics requirement and how it will be implemented in schools, including those beyond MCS.

“What I hope doesn’t happen is that everybody just expects that sixth-grade teacher to teach those kids civics, and nobody has to do anything else because that won’t work,” Snider said. “That’s like saying the only time we’re ever gonna talk about government is when they’re seniors. No, we’re a

Currently, the part of the project that will help MCS sixth-grade teachers meet the new 2023-24 requirement will be tested in around four months at the start of the next school year. Northside Middle School principal Ben Williams is hopeful for its success.

As part of the efforts to help students understand civics in real time, Williams has had trips with student leaders to places such as the Indiana Statehouse.

“[They were able to] sit and learn about those processes and history,” Williams said, “understanding that the current laws that are being debated and some of the topics that are being contested directly affect their lives today.”

The trip was just one of many. Williams shared future hopes of more field trips and projects to get students more civically engaged. Back at the high school level, Snider has been sending her students to local council meetings.