Understanding Your Local Context

Grades9, 10, 11, 12, APCivics

What it is

This worksheet guides users through questions about their state or local community to prepare for climate education policy change.
The questions are organized into four categories: evaluating readiness for change, preparing and designing change initiatives, managing change, and transformative change, with separate sections for the state policy landscape and the school district or county policy landscape.

Preparation:

Have resources on hand or ready for students to research the educational policy, public policy, and community landscapes.
Review the questions and select those that are most relevant for your classroom and purpose.

Classroom Implementation:

Use this resource to help students plan out a community action project.
Use this resource in a civics unit on state and local government and have students research who sets education policy in their own state and district and present their findings.

Differentiation:

Assign each small group one of the four categories, then have groups share what they learned about their community.

Hosted on eepro.naaee.org

Add your location for local examples, questions, and action ideas.

Standards alignment · D2.Civ.1.9-12 + 3 more

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards

D2.Civ.1.9-12Distinguish the powers and responsibilities of local, state, tribal, national, and international civic and political institutions.
D2.Civ.12.9-12Analyze how people use and challenge local, state, national, and international laws to address a variety of public issues.
D4.7.9-12Assess options for individual and collective action to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.

Social Studies

12.12.G5PUBLIC POLICY: All levels of government—local, state, and federal—are involved in shaping public policy and responding to public policy issues, all of which influence our lives beyond what appears in the Constitution. Engaged citizens understand how to find, monitor, evaluate, and respond to information on public policy issues.