UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD OUTSIDE THE CLAS SROOM THROUGH

speakers and take the students off campus for learning opportunities.

“We wanted them to pick what interested them and what they would be interested in learning about,” Francis said.

It would make the experience a learning opportunity for the students as well as the teachers. Using the five categories of social justice, environment, politics and government, public health, and global issues, they brainstormed ideas for seminars that would branch off each one. For example, under the umbrella of the environment, there was a seminar on water, one on waste reduction, and one on climate change. They created a list of 20 seminars.

“We were all ready to do this thing.It was early 2020, and we were in the middle of planning. We were using faculty planning time, we were going to use summer grants, and it was all supposed to start in fall 2020,” Francis said.

But Ohio Governor Mike DeWine ordered all Ohio schools to close on March 16, 2020. The state-wide “stay at home” order went into effect a week later on March 23.

“When the pandemic came, we knew from March of 2020 that this was not going to be possible,” Bolton added.

THE PIVOT: ADAPTING CIVIC ENGAGEMENT SEMINARS DURING COVID

By the time of the 2020-21 school year, the administration was eager to keep the idea of the Civic Engagement Seminars alive despite not being able to have students go off campus or bring speakers to campus.

“We came back in the fall of 2020, and it was the election. We thought we had to do something about the election. It was this major event going on in the country,” Francis said.

Though the pandemic meant that they could not do the Civic Engagement Seminars like the program was envisioned, a day was set aside just before the 2020 presidential election to focus on voting, rhetoric in debates, implications of past presidential elections, and major issues on the ballot.

The students were broken into groups and rotated to teachers from different departments, each with a different lesson plan and topic discussion.

“The kids went through this day about the election, and, at the end of it, we were like, ‘yeah, that was worth doing. It was a lot of work, but it was truly worth it,’ ” Francis said.