May 27, 2015 – The Project Citizen Professional Development (PD) Series is for teachers who are new to Project Citizen and would like to bring the program to their classrooms. The four-part Saturday series (Feb-May, makeup date is on June 6) took educators step-by-step in learning how to implement the program, engage students, and use teaching strategies and resources. PDs were led by veteran Project Citizen teachers with over a decade of program experience.
Project Citizen is designed to engage students of all ages in the research and design of a public policy in their school or community. After choosing a local public policy issue, students identify a problem with the policy, research alternative policies, create and propose their own policy solution and design an action plan to implement their proposal. In the end, students create a four-part display board with each of the above features as well as compile a literacy-based portfolio binder that documents their research.
Project Citizen complements the 5th, 7th, and 8th grade social studies curricula. All materials are aligned to the Common Core standards. Upon successful completion of a “Project Citizen” portfolio, students participated in a school-level showcase. School-level winners will have the opportunity to participate in a nationwide showcase event in July. Purchase of the program included a professional development session that trained new teachers in the implementation of “Project Citizen” as well as a class set of 30 student texts and a teacher’s guide. The cost of the program is $700, and was free for the teachers who participated in the PD series. Please click here for more program information.
If you are interested or have questions about the program, please contact Carolyn Morway: cmorway@schools.nyc.gov.
Article written by Valerie Kornitchouk.