Lesson Title: Taking a Course of Action with Public Policy

Day(s) Required: 2 Days

Minnesota State Social Studies Standards:

• 9.1.1.1.4 Examine a public policy issue by defining the problem, developing alternative courses of action, evaluating the consequences of each alternative, selecting a course of action, and designing a plan to implement the action and resolve the problem.

Cross-Curricular Integration:

Essential Question:

How do we develop a course of action on public policy issues?

Engage:

Public policy as we have learned impacts everybody, whether it is receiving a ticket after being caught speeding or watching the television. What people may or may not know is that you can impact public policy through lobbying. By studying the problem and being able to accurately define the public policy, you will be able to develop action plans, look at potential consequences, design an implementation plan, and potentially resolve the problem.

So lets get started, what type of action should we take on these events:

• Raising the age for probation license expiration until age 18.
• Wearing uniforms in public schools.
• Trying youth (those under 18) as adults.
• Restricting the types of food sold to students in vending machine or school stores.

For Activity 6.2.2: Introduction, pick one of these topics and explain how this will affect you. In your statement you will need to explain what are the pros/cons for each of these events.

Explain:

For this lesson we are going to look at how you can impact public policy. Yesterday, you learned about the steps that a public policy issue undertakes. Today we are going to put that plan into action. This will be done in three steps; first by becoming informed, then you will speak up, and then you will explain how you would act on your chosen issue.

Becoming informed - How do you become informed about a public policy issue? The first step we are going to do is brainstorm a list of public policy issues. If you are having difficulties with this, spend time running through your day. What are things that you encounter everyday that could benefit from public policy? Here is an example, delaying school start times could theoretically become a public policy issue.

Once your list is created you will need to read it outloud to your classmates. The items on the list will be combined with the lists created by classmates.

Explore:

Speaking up - Now from your list pick the topic that means the most to you. You will need to answer the following questions:

• Why does this mean the most to you?
• What do you know about this topic?

Using the example of delaying school start times. This issue is important to me because we are starting school earlier and earlier and it is impacting student concentration in early morning classes. School early morning start times also mean that students will need to go to bed earlier.

Then you will began researching this topic based on questions you develop. You may utilize the research tool in Google Docs to begin finding information about your topic. For example with my research on school start times I might research:

• What times do surrounding schools start school?
• What impact does the early start time have on others?

Some research on school start time includes: contacting or searching school websites, research how much sleep teenagers need, and/or researching how much time students spend in extra-curricular activities or jobs.

Your research should be in-depth enough that you are able to provide at least two alternatives. Additionally you should have a variety of web resources.

Expand:

Act - Finally the last portion of today’s lesson will need to utilize the public policy steps outlined in yesterday’s lesson to complete our course of action with public policy. Be sure to answer the following questions:

• What is the identified problem?
• What were the options for the course of action to resolve the problem?
• What are the consequences for each course of action?
• What course of action was determined?
• What is the plan to implement the action?
• How is the problem going to be resolved?

Once all of the research has been done turn in your final project (including all of your research) into the dropbox called Activity 6.2.2 - Final Project on Public Policy