HAPPENING IN SCHOOL
Now that you have some extra time on your hands, since Arizona’s Governor and Superintendent of Public Instruction announced that all Arizona schools will be closed, you may need to find some new things to do. Don't worry, we have you covered. Here is a list of some fun but still educational activities.
Participate in the Law Day Contest
Learn more about civics by playing icivics
Compete in the 9th Circuit Civics Contest
Weigh in on What Do You Think?
Enjoy!
January 30th, 2020, marked a historic event in iCivics history when it hosted their first ever virtual iCivics AZ Regional Tournament. Over 300 students across Arizona participated in the event. Students competed in teams and played the online iCivics game Counties Work. Counties Work is a games that has players manage local government, evaluate citizen requests and maintain a balanced budget. Of the 109 teams that participated 16 will move on to the State E-Tournament that will be held on March 3rd, 2020. To see a list of those competing in the state tournament click here or to try Counties Work for yourself.
The Arizona We the People State Competition was held on Friday, January 10th at Mesa Community College. The We the People program simulates congressional hearings where students testify as constitutional experts in front of panels of esteemed judges; often legislatures, judges and lawyers. Ten high school teams competed in the competition from all across the state but ultimately, at the end of the day, Mountain View High School reclaimed their first place title. Mountain View will have the opportunity to travel to Washington D.C. to compete in the We the People National finals. Our second place winners, Corona del Sol High School, will also have the ability to join them this year as Arizona has received a Wild Card allowing Arizona to bring two teams. Hamilton High School took third and Gilbert Classical Academy took fourth place. Congratulations to all who competed and Good Luck to those who get to compete in D.C.
If you would like to get involved with the We the People Program talk to your teachers to see if you have a program at your school. Need more information about how to get a team started? Click here and fill out the contact us form.
The Arizona Department of Education is creating its first ever Student Advisory Council and you could be on it! "The purpose of the Student Advisory Council is to support Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman’s work to improve K-12 education in the state. Fifteen students will be chosen for the panel, and members will serve from October this year through July 2020. All meetings will take place in Phoenix, but students across the state can participate in the meetings via phone or video chat." Student must be between 5-12 years old and email 1-2 letters of recommendation from their peers to the Arizona Department of Educations. For more details about the program visit: https://www.azed.gov/adeinfo/student-advisory-council.
Stacey Garcia was told that she couldn't play baseball for her middle school. If she wanted to play ball, it was going to have to be softball; but Stacey wanted to play baseball. She had already played in little league and wanted to continue so her parents went to the district. The district agreed that Stacey could tryout with the rest of the baseball hopefuls. She tried out and the next day met up with the coach. “He came up to me, showed me a list of all the names that made it, and he said congratulations and shook my hand, and I saw my name on there, which was really cool,” said Stacey, according to ABC 15. Stacey Garcia is now her Glendale middle school's baseball team and hopes to make to make it on her high school team next year.
Do you have freedom of speech in school? Last Friday, during a "Party in the U.S.A" spirit day at Perry High School in Gilbert, Arizona students were asked to take down a "Make America Great Again" (commonly referred to as "MAGA") banner. Students also reported being asked to remove MAGA hats, though the school officials state they never made this request. The incidents upset some students and parents who latter held a protest of approximately 50 outside the school the following Monday. Perry High School sophomores who participated said they support students' right to Free Speech. However, do students have the same rights on campus that they do off of campus? The Supreme Court has had several landmark cases on the subject some of which do limit student speech on a school premise like Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier and Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraiser and others that enforce a students right to freedom of speech like Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School. To learn more about freedom of speech read, "Freedom of Speech, What is and What it isn't".
BULLYING. A word that invokes images of nerds and jocks and the countless funny TV and movie encounters, is back in the news today after an 8 year old boy is found dead in his home. Gabriel Taye is believed to have committed suicide after a "bullying" instance that left him laying unconscious on a bathroom floor for six minutes while his classmates poked at him. The problem with the use of the word bullying is the connotation, the idea or feeling that the word invokes. When we hear it, it brings up images of small school yard skirmishes that have no real consequence. The reality is much different. Bullying is used to describe crimes such as harassment, theft, assault, battery, manslaughter and even murder. We cannot allow the people perpetrating these acts to diminish the severity of the grief they inflict and hide their crimes behind a belittled label. Assault is assault, and it should be called and treated like it no matter where it is done. The proper reaction just might save a life. Learn more about the laws that surround bullying and the crimes that it entails here.
Five 9th graders are getting international notoriety for their science experiment. What started as a school project rocketed them into the spotlight for what they discovered. The girls noticed that having their cell phones by their head as they slept caused them to have less concentration at school and difficulty sleeping so they decided to test the theory for their biology class. They took trays of cress seeds and placed them in a room both with and without Wi-Fi routers, routers use the same type of waves as cell phones, and gave them the same amount of water and sunlight; the results of what happened over the next 12 days are nothing but astounding. The seeds that had been placed with the router not only failed to grow but some were even mutated or dead. The seeds that were not subjected to the router grew strong and healthy. Scientist have been impressed with the girls precision in the experiment and are now setting up their own similar experiments to further test the results.
Hazing, a ritual that colleges have attempted to extinguish for years, has found its way into the high school system. This week Hamilton High School, a school located in Chandler, Arizona, is at the forefront of the conversation. Six football players were arrested, five of which are teenagers, for crimes that started with hazing but lead to charges that also include sexual assault and kidnapping. Hazing originated as a right of passage to "teach newcomers respect for [group] policies, rules and leaders" but has been known to turn from mildly degrading to dangerous and even deadly. The first recorded death from hazing happened at Cornell University in 1873 and by 1912 death by hazing had become a common headline in newspapers. Since that time school administrators and legislatures have attempted to end hazing through hazing prevention laws like A.R.S. § 15-2301. Learn more about hazing in the school offenses section of this site.
The Arizona We the People State Competition was held on Friday, January 13th at Mesa Community College. The We the People program simulates congressional hearings where students testify as constitutional experts in front of panels of esteemed judges; often legislatures, judges and lawyers. Ten high school teams competed in the competition from all across the state but this year the title went to Hamilton High School. Hamilton will be traveling to Washington D.C. to compete in the 30th anniversary of the We the People National Finals against over 1,000 students from across the nation. Second place, who also has the ability to travel to D.C as a wildcard, went to Corona del Sol and third place went to Sunrise Mountain High School.
If you would like to get involved with the We the People Program talk to your teachers to see if you have a program at your school. Need more information about how to get a team started? Click here and fill out the contact us form.
If you wanted to, do you think you could sing Adele’s “Hello” or Justin Bieber’s “Sorry,” record it, make copies, sell it for money, and keep all the profits? Do you think you could open a restaurant, put a big Golden Arches out front, and call it “McDonald’s”? Do you think you could take apart a Samsung Galaxy S, figure out how works, open a factory, and sell your own smartphones?Do you know that by doing these things you’d be breaking the law? And, if so, do you know why? If not take a look at the new Intellectual Property section on LawforKids to learn more about the laws and ideas that make up intellectual property.
Join kids across Arizona and take a poll about who you think should be our next president? Click here to tell us what you think. Once you submit your answer you will be able to see the current poll results.
Arizona recently passed a new law that requires all high school students and GED candidates to pass a 100 question civic test. This test will become mandatory starting in the 2016-2017 school year and will require a 60% pass rate. The test will come from the civics portion of the Citizenship test and was created in the hope to create more informed citizens with a better understanding of the workings of the government.
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