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Students observe Constitution Day in various ways
We the people of the United States may not yet have formed a completely perfect union, but students and teachers in Pinellas County think the founding fathers got it mostly right.
By ANNE W. ANDERSON
Article published on Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2005 |
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![[Image]](/content_images/092805_pco-02-a.jpg) |
| Photo by ANNE W. ANDERSON |
| From left, Clearwater High School freshmen Shayla Keller, 14; Alexis Alvarez, 14: and Katie Lutkowski, 13, catch up on current events before watching a video about the U.S. Constitution. |
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PINELLAS COUNTY – Freedom of speech and profiling were the topics ninth grade American Government students in Linda Smith’s class at Clearwater High School honed in on Friday morning after watching a video about the U.S. Constitution produced by Florida’s Sixth Judicial Circuit.
“Should you give up your rights to be safe?” one girl asked responding to discussion about the Patriot Act and profiling.
The video was part of Pinellas County Schools’ observation mandated by an obscure provision slipped into a December 2004, Federal appropriations bill. The provision, authored by Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, requires educational institutions receiving Federal funds to have an educational program on the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17.
Federal employees are also encouraged to observe Constitution Day (also called Citizenship Day) and new federal employees are supposed to receive training about the Constitution when they are hired.
No funds were appropriated for the provision, no specific requirements as to what kind of training were given, and no consequences for failing to comply have been set.
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![[Image]](/content_images/092805_pco-02-b.jpg) |
| Photo by ANNE W. ANDERSON |
| Students at Clearwater High School watch Florida Sixth Judicial Circuit Chief Judge David A. Demers talk about the U.S. Constitution on a video produced in observance of Constitution Day. |
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Randy Lightfoot, social studies supervisor for grades K-12 for Pinellas County Schools, said a list of Web sites offering lesson plans was sent to the schools so teachers could choose for themselves how and what to teach. Copies of the video were sent to all Pinellas County Schools high school social studies department chairs.
Lightfoot – and all the teachers interviewed – said the Constitution was something that is taught anyway.
“We’re just highlighting it on this day because of the legislation,” Lightfoot said, adding that the observance will run into Patriot Week – mandated by the State of Florida and focusing on the Bill of Rights – at the end of the month.
Chief Judge David A. Demers of the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court spoke on the video of the “tremendously difficult process (the writers of the Constitution) went through” to arrive at a document that has survived mostly intact after more than 200 years. Demers spoke with 11 members of Pinellas County’s Teen Court, which is comprised of students from public and private Pinellas County high schools (with an occasional eighth grader) who decide sanctions for other teens who admit to traffic offenses, truancy and other first offenses.
Oscar Bastardo, 16, a senior at Pinellas Park High School and one of the Teen Court members who participated in the video, came to the United States from Venezuela when he was 7. Bastardo thinks much of the turmoil in Venezuela is because of the way Venezuela’s constitution was written.
“(The U.S. Constitution) is such a vague form it can adapt to changing times,” Bastardo said in a telephone interview. Bastardo cited the Fourth Amendment (Search and Arrest Warrants), noting that many of the terms are not defined specifically.
Jhavani Pathak, a senior in the International Baccalaureate program at St. Petersburg High School, agreed saying in particular that the Second Amendment’s (Right to Bear Arms) definition of ‘arms’ was “non-descript.”
“Our ideals don’t necessarily have to die, but they have to adapt to a changing world,” Pathak said.
Mike Rivera, social studies department chair at Osceola Middle School, said he took a different tack with his seventh grade World Geography students. Rivera, who said he always teaches a two-week unit on American government in his World Geography class, talked in particular about Athenian democracy and Britain’s Magna Carta.
“We have founding fathers, but we also have founding grandfathers and great-great-great-great grandfathers,” Rivera said, adding that many students today don’t realize that women in this country have only been allowed to vote for the last 100 years.
Traditional schools weren’t the only ones observing Constitution Day.
Kathryn Alvarez, co-owner and director of Loraine’s Academy in St. Petersburg, said they planned to make an event out of it using drama to review the preamble and important dates for her massage therapy, nail technology and cosmetology students.
Alvarez said the academy’s 250 students ages 16 to 80 come from all over the Tampa Bay area and that most have lost whatever knowledge about the Constitution they got in middle or high school.
“Unless they have jobs with any kind of government authority, they never think of (the Constitution) and what it means,” Alvarez said. “It’s been real interesting for us – we’re trying to teach them how to do hair and heal bodies, and then we’re asked to do this by the Department of Education.”
Mary Williams, who teaches Social Studies to students in sixth to eighth grades at Sacred Heart School in Pinellas Park, said she teaches something about the Constitution almost every week.
“The insight of the men who formed these documents was brilliant,” Williams said. “They didn’t know what life would be like 200 years in the future, but they wrote it flexibly so we would not have to have a turnover in our constitution each time we have a turnover of presidents.”
Various government and nonprofit organization Web sites offer lesson plans, games and other resources for learning more about the U.S. Constitution:
• U.S. Courts – This creative site offers two interactive games – ‘Double Jeopardy’ and ‘Who Wants to be a Million-Dollar Citizen’ – along with one-page handouts, fast fact sheets, and classroom activities including a ‘Mock Trial of William Penn.’ Go to www.uscourts.gov/outreach/constitutionday.html.
• National Endowment for the Humanities – Want to learn more about the famous painting that adorns many U.S. history textbooks? Want to see George Washington’s notes on the draft Constitution? Go to www.edsitement.neh.gov/ConstitutionDay/constitution_index2.html.
• U.S. Office of Personnel Management – Contains information on training new federal employees. Go to www.opm.gov/constitution_initiative.
• The National Archives – Compare the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution and learn about other foundational documents. Go to www.archives.gov.
• U.S. Department of Education – Various resources. Go to www.ed.gov/free/constitutionindex.html.
• Center for Civic Education – A “nonprofit, nonpartisan educational corporation” offering lessons for grades K (“Introduction to the term ‘authority’”) through 11-12 (“Major conflicts and the Bill of Rights’”). Go to www.civiced.org/byrd.
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Article published on Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2005
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