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Chicago’s Global Citizenship Initiative

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

Though much attention is now being paid to the Chicago teachers strike (AEI’s Rick Hess has some good thoughts on that here and here), there’s another education initiative in Chicago’s schools worth mentioning: a pilot program to teach a yearlong civic-learning curriculum to seniors in fifteen of the city’s schools.

According to the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, which is working with the MacArthur Foundation and the Spencer Foundation to sponsor the program, the “Global Citizenship Initiative is designed to address a profound civic achievement gap, caused by a lack of high-quality, school-based civic learning opportunities in urban areas.” University professors, teachers, and civic organization leaders worked together to create the course framework and to provide resources to the pilot schools.

Lisa Stiegman, writing at Chicago Now’s “School Zone,” explains the three aspects of the program:

The Chicago Public Schools Global Citizenship Initiative (GCI) will significantly expand and improve civic education in Chicago. The new plan focuses on a year-long civic learning curriculum for high school seniors built around three core components: civic literacy, civic action, and student leadership. These core components will exist within a broader CPS K-12 social science framework. Here is what students will do:

• Civics Literacy- draft classroom constitutions after a simulation of the constitutional convention, create voter education guides, work on voter registration and voter turn-out campaigns, work on case studies of non-profit organizations and volunteer
• Civic Action- in addition to current [Chicago Public Schools] graduation requirements of three classroom-integrated service projects, the GCI will extend these opportunities. Students will perform work in the community that is connected to their civics/financial literacy courses. This work will involve local nonprofits such as the Mikva Challenge, the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago, Facing History and Ourselves and the League of Women Voters.
• Student leadership- GCI schools will offer students leadership training, guidance, and organizational support to allow them to lead meaningful school improvement initiatives (e.g., anti-cyber bullying policies, after school program strategy, etc.). As a result of this training, students will be equipped to address critical school policy questions that impact student learning, wellness and overall success.

Learn more about the Global Citizenship Initiative by watching the McCormick Foundation introduce the initiative at the program’s launch a few weeks ago.