Democracy or the Curriculum? Vote Here!

By Laura Reasoner Jones

Back in September, I became part of a four-member team planning a mock presidential election for my school. What a great opportunity to introduce our elementary students to American democracy in action, we thought. After all, presidential elections occur only every four years, and this one promised to be the most exciting and meaningful in quite some time.

The team – which included our library media specialist, the administrative intern, a 4th grade teacher and myself – began by debating the benefits of creating our own voting program versus using a national Web site. We questioned whether we wanted to simply track data from each of our own classrooms, or perhaps have the ability to compare our school data with the rest of the state or even the nation. I even went so far as to create a SMARTBoard interactive school map that would change the color of each classroom into Red or Blue, depending on how the vote went. CNN, look out!

Ultimately we selected the University of Virginia’s online site (youthleadership.net) to help us manage our mock vote. As evidence that we weren’t the only teachers excited about this idea, we were actually the 1300th school in Virginia to sign up. We ordered all the teaching materials and the fun stuff (stickers, tattoos, balloons, posters, etc.), then sent out instructions for classroom teachers, anticipating some enthusiasm for what we were sure would be a...