Presidential Election Coverage--Long Overdue!

Jessica Mitchell
Austin High School
Special Education
Basic English I.

Hi folks,

My students and I discussed election coverage on the Monday before the election. I took notes on their responses and am now getting a moment to type them up. I teach Resource English I. at Austin High School, and most of my students are unmotivated and/or disenchanted with school/life. I had to brainstorm ways to modify the assignment for the Election week since most of my students had not been reading or paying attention to election coverage. I knew it was also going to be difficult to get them to read election coverage in the newspaper for ten minutes on Monday morning. So, I started the class period by giving them a survey about election information to complete. Ignore the first few questions, as they were Halloween questions that I knew the students would want to answer (since the 3rd was the first day back since Halloween). We then discussed the answers to the survey, which led to a fairly engaging discussion of election news. I then asked the students to look through the paper for headlines and articles that dealt with the next day's election. In groups, they were to record the headlines of the articles they found. Then, because they love the comic strips, I asked them to count how many comic strips had to do with the election.

If nothing else, this assignment let them see just how much information the paper included regarding the election and hopefully impressed upon them the strong impact this election was having on those around them.

I ended the class by asking students as a class to prepare a letter to the editor of the Statesman regarding the Presidential candidates' views they were most interested in knowing more about. The students didn't know one way or another if these views had been covered in the paper, because, as I said, they hadn't particularly been paying attention to the coverage before the election at all. But, I got some interesting responses about what they most wanted to know about the candidates. I also enjoyed being able to discuss with my students how the President really can have an effect on their lives.

Here's what we came up with as a class:

"We have been looking at Presidential Election coverage, but we haven't seen much in the Monday November 3rd paper that matters to us. We want to see what the candidates think about the things that affect teenagers like us. Some of these topics are the high cost of college and the rising cost of public transportation and food. We want gas prices to stay as they are now and not go up again like they did earlier this year. We also want to hear much more about the candidates' opinions on illegal immigration. We want to know how the candidates plan to offer help for those in need in this country and in Africa. We also want to hear the candidates' views on lowering the legal age for voting, driving, and drinking. We want to know what each candidate would do as president to stop the way some families abuse food stamp usage, while others go hungry. How would they help homeless people who live in ditches and under bridges? What are their plans for improving technology in our country and in our schools? And what about lowering taxes for war veterans?"

We ran out of time to finish our letter, but I was pleased with the fact that most of the students left class with a deeper understanding of the fact that the federal government really does have an impact on their lives.

I will post more soon on the things we have done in the past two weeks. I am also attaching the Election Survey in the comments section.