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Constitution Day highlights from previous years
As we brainstormed ideas for this version of Constitution Day, we realized how many previous activities and lessons were still relevant today. Here are our top eight. If you’d like to revisit the previous years’ lesson and ideas, we’ve included links to each year at the end of the page.
Celebrating Constitution Day (Lori Keekley, 2015): This activity encourages the English, social studies and journalism teachers to engage students in exploring the Constitution’s relevance to their daily lives, facts about the Constitution and understanding the amendments to the Constitution
First Amendment School Dialogue (Jeff Kocur, 2017): Guide your students through a class-sized (or whole-school) dialogue about the five freedoms of the First Amendment. Students will identify and evaluate the impact of the First Amendment in their own lives and the lives of others.
The Importance of an Independent and Active Press (Matthew Smith, 2017): Expose students to the many possible benefits of independent media in a democracy through quotes and video excerpts of world leaders espousing the necessity of a free press. Students will evaluate and discuss their own reaction to these arguments.
Understanding the perils of prior review and restraint (Jeff Kocur, 2015): Click here for the activity. For additional resources and model ethical guidelines and staff manual procedures for this, go here and here.
Examining the gray area between political correctness and free speech (Matthew Smith, 2016): Students will explore several topics through peer discussion and real-world examples in small groups followed by a large-group discussion. By Matt Smith
The Decision to Report: Because You Can, Does that Mean you Should? (Jeff Kocur, 2013): Allows students to explore the conflict of reporting the truth when that truth may have consequences. Students work with several leading questions and apply them to several scenarios.
Our Right to Comment (Jeff Kocur, 2016): Since media organizations have moved to online formats, they have struggled with the practice of hosting online comments next to their content. Many news organizations require posters to meet specific standards, moderate the comments, and reserve the right to remove or delete comments and users. Some organizations even require each post be approved by a human before it can be live on their sites. More recently, NPR is the latest news organization to completely remove comments from its news sites. Students will explore the question whether the ability to comment on news stories creates a more or less informed culture. By Jeff Kocur
Takedown demands (John Bowen, 2014): This lesson addresses how to handle takedown requests. Students will work through two scenarios and then create a takedown request policy.
Previous Constitution Day lessons and activities by years:
Read MoreFace, fight and educate
those who would limit media
by John Bowen, MJE
A Boston Globe article about its Aug. 16 campaign for media to speak out against President Donald Trump’s attacks on journalists called the president’s rhetoric ”alarming.”`
“Whatever happened to the free press? Whatever happened to honest reporting,” the reporter quotes the president in an Aug. 2 political rally in Pennsylvania. “They don’t report it. They only make it up.”
The Globe seeks editorial comment from other media to stress potential damage to our democracy from the intimidation, and the importance of an unfettered press.
In a way, the current round of attacks from the president and others have some roots in the 1988 U.S. Supreme Court’s Hazelwood decision. The court’s majority enabled public school officials to limit student expression – not just of student media but any expression in school – under certain conditions.
We now have a generation of teachers and administrators, let along their students, who have only seen media control in many of our schools.[pullquote]In a way, the current round of attacks from the president and others have some roots in the 1988 U.S. Supreme Court’s Hazelwood decision. The court’s majority enabled public school officials to limit student expression – not just of student media but any expression in school – under certain conditions.[/pullquote]
Hazelwood and other decisions essentially created an expectation student media in public schools could and should be controlled.
If school officials frowned upon criticism, demanded a positive image and prior reviewed and restrained where information did not match their their view of what student media should be, that became the norm. Challenge it and students faced censorship, suspension, withdrawal of school recommendations.
Read MoreMaybe #Firstonthefirst initiative can help move the needle
Maybe it was last night’s reflection on Anthony Kennedy’s final day serving as a Supreme Court justice.
Or maybe it was because I’m still recovering from the latest State of the First Amendment survey.
In case you missed it, more than one-third of the survey respondents (40 percent) could not name a single freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment. Only one out of the 1,009 people surveyed could correctly name all five freedoms.
That blows my mind, and I often think about what I can or should be doing differently to help move the needle outside the walls of my classroom.
So today I began what I’m calling #Firstonthefirst.
I made a commitment to talk to five strangers today and share with them about the First Amendment. I’m going to do it on the first of every month, and I hope you’ll join me.
It’s easy enough to visit with folks in line at Starbucks or the grocery checkout, or colleagues at school, or parents on the bleachers at your kiddo’s sporting event. A few minutes of conversation can make a huge difference. I want the people in my community to know the five freedoms and to have a better understanding of why the First Amendment matters.
To make a visual connection, I wore one of my First Amendment T-shirts, and I’ll do that for each #Firstonthefirst. There’s something about seeing those 45 words (or in the case of this shirt, my favorite of those 45) that makes it more memorable, and I hope to leverage the power of social media to spread this movement and get my students — and all of you — having these First Amendment conversations as well.
Read MoreWhat is copyright?
When students violate copyright, they are stealing from the original copyright holder.
This reference area provides information on what copyright and fair use are, provides guidelines and provides best practices and copyright free resources.
Read More
Campaign spotlights students’ work
that made a difference
SPRC members are reintroducing the Making a Difference campaign. This monthly posting will highlight students who have made a difference through their coverage. When your students create content that has a positive impact on your school or community, please fill out the submission form and we’ll tell you how to send your content. JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee will post one or more packages a month on its website and promote them on social media.
Read More