Minnesota Civics Summit supports social studies teachers amid political polarization

NINA MOINI: This weekend, Minnesota social studies teachers will be gathering in St. Cloud for the Minnesota Civics Summit. It's put on by the League of Women Voters of Minnesota, and it brings together teachers and civics organizations to support teachers in engaging students during a polarizing time in politics. Joining me now to share more about the effort is Amy Anderson. She's the executive director for the YMCA Center for Youth Voice. Thanks for being here, Amy.

AMY ANDERSON: Thanks so much for having me.

NINA MOINI: Also happy to be joined by Crystal Johnson. She's a 12th grade government and economics teacher in Osseo and also on the board of directors for the Minnesota Council for Social Studies. Thank you for being here as well, Crystal.

CRYSTAL JOHNSON: Thank you so much for having us.

NINA MOINI: Well, I love that you all are tackling this topic. Because we hear this over and over and over again, right? Oh, it's so polarized. Everything is so polarized. And it's trickling into how our younger people perceive and experience this world, really. Amy, I wondered if you could start about telling me about this summit and who's all going to be coming together this weekend.

AMY ANDERSON: Sure, I'd be happy to. So this came about because there are just a number of civic organizations that are interested in the civic health of our communities, particularly with young people, and wanted to do something to both come together and find ways for us to connect, and then for us to connect and support teachers.

And so a number of us, the Humanities Center, Department of Education-- you mentioned the League of Women Voters of Minnesota and the Y-- along with some other engaged volunteers-- to try to decide how we could best accomplish those two goals, one, of collecting our resources together to make them available to teachers, and, two, to listen to teachers and hear what they are facing and so we could be as most supportive as we could.

NINA MOINI: Sure. And Amy, would you just talk, for folks who don't know, a little bit about what the YMCA Center for Youth Voice does?

AMY ANDERSON: Sure. So we are a department in the YMCA of the north, which is the largest association here in Minnesota. We put on about 10 different civic youth, civic engagement and education programs. The most well-known probably is Youth in Government, Model United Nations. We also do Youth Day at the Capitol.

We have a program called Respectful Conversations in Schools and a number of other things that help young people learn the civic skills, knowledge, and motivation to become civically engaged when they're young and to carry that over when they leave high school and go into the communities where they go next.

NINA MOINI: Cool. And so Crystal, as a teacher who has been trying to navigate polarized times, discussions around civics. How have you been trying to navigate all this in your classroom?

CRYSTAL JOHNSON: Oh, that's a good question. It's definitely something that I think about daily. I have a lot of personal feelings of integrity and, really, morality on teaching civics and government in ways that are non-biased so that students really just have the skills to understand government, to understand current events, to become mindful consumers of information, and also critical thinkers.

And so I really have to approach our current events and connect them with, really, the foundational skills that students need to understand and navigate what's going on in our country right now. And to do that, I really tried to stick to the Constitution, to try to stick to the principles of democracy, and really just give the kids those foundational skills.

We, of course, incorporate current events. I don't know how anybody couldn't. But when we look at current events like these new executive orders or the makeup of Congress and the balance of power-- to really focus on historical examples and to focus on what's the foundation of our government and to look at it through that lens as much as we can.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. Crystal, I was thinking about when I was growing up in Minnesota, I didn't even really wonder or think about what the political leanings of any of my teachers were. I wonder if that's still the case. Or if you feel like do students ask you questions around that, do you feel personally impacted by it?

CRYSTAL JOHNSON: Absolutely. My students are always curious. They're always wondering. I start a lot of classes, especially as we approach current events, with disclaimers. I start with a disclaimer when I introduce the topic of the class.

NINA MOINI: Wow.

CRYSTAL JOHNSON: I say, I take my job very seriously, and my job is to provide you with the basic skills for understanding our US government, our Constitution, our state government, and how to be an engaged and active citizen. I do have political ideologies personally. I do have personal bias.

NINA MOINI: Sure.

CRYSTAL JOHNSON: But you should not see that when I teach you, and I will not ever share my personal political beliefs or leanings with you.

NINA MOINI: OK. Amy, I mean, these are tough tasks for our educators here in the state of Minnesota. What are some of the tools and resources that you are going to be providing at this summit so that people can help to navigate this unusual time?

AMY ANDERSON: One of the tools we're actually going to be doing a training on with the teachers is our Respectful Conversations in Schools protocol, which is really designed to give teachers a solid framework to be able to have these kind of challenging conversations with in their classrooms.

It's really leaning into asking students to listen to one another, to speak from their own personal experience, and to ask questions of genuine interest, to help go deeper with their classmates and understand why people think or believe different things based on their own experience.

Crystal mentioned that she has a bias. We all have biases, based on what we have lived in our lives and seen personally. And so I think to get to the point where we can understand that people might have different opinions or beliefs or experiences with something, and that doesn't have to shut down a conversation about an issue or a topic, even if we disagree.

NINA MOINI: So this was developed after the 2016 election, correct, Amy? And I'm curious if, in the last eight years, you've adjusted that at all with the changing time surface pretty much the same?

AMY ANDERSON: We adjusted it at the beginning when we devised the protocol. And then we actually piloted it and worked with teachers on it for several years--

NINA MOINI: Oh.

AMY ANDERSON: --and then came to feel that the model we had was very, very good. And that was actually just prior to COVID and George Floyd and a lot of things. And since then, the model has proven to be solid, regardless of the issues.

The model itself is very simple, but again, allows for this sort of tight framework that people can talk with those three focuses of personal experience, and then their own questions of others and genuinely trying to get at understanding different people's perspectives. And that's really kind of base to what we all should be doing, I think, in terms of trying to navigate these politicizing times.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, and how far has the reach gone? Obviously, with the summit, you'll reach even more people. But is this across the state or certain districts? How many people have you shared this training with?

AMY ANDERSON: Well, how many I've shared it with and how many have continued to do it, we've been talking to different groups probably since 2019. So any chance I get to get in front of a group and talk about this, I do. And then some people get excited about that and call and say, come to my district, and do some more work. And we've actually added some members to my team to help be able to support that work as well.

So we hope to continue to get the message out. COVID, obviously, made that harder. Teachers and schools were doing so much at the time that adding new things to their toolkit was not on the top of their radar. But they're starting to do that again. And we recognize that this is just one tool. Teachers have a full box of things that they bring to the classroom, but this is one we heard they needed. And we're hoping to be able to continue to deliver it and get the word out.

NINA MOINI: OK. And, Crystal, we know that many of us don't retain everything that we learned in school. It's important for people to go back and make sure that they're still civically engaged and know how things work and how government operates. But I'm curious, as an educator, what you hope that your students take away from your class that they could take with them into adulthood.

CRYSTAL JOHNSON: Oh, such a good point, because I think about this a lot. And really, the resources for how to look back and how to gather and find information-- [CLEARS THROAT] excuse me-- and be a good consumer of information, I think one thing that I've noticed, at least, in current events, is that with these really polarized political times, people are going back and opening the Constitution and trying to find where it says this, and what does it mean about that?

And there's a lot more interpretation and reading coming from the people as opposed to just the people running the federal government or state governments-- which is wonderful because we really want people to be engaged citizens. And so my hope is that the big takeaways-- like current events come and go. My big takeaways that I hope my students have is knowing that civics is not a bystander sport.

And there might be times where we choose to-- [CLEARS THROAT] excuse me again-- really take up a mission and take up a purpose and take up a cause, and then there might be years and times where we don't. But knowing that they have a right to be involved, knowing that they have a right to be informed, and knowing where they can look to for information about our government-- yeah.

And I think that's my hope, that if they don't remember exactly this or exactly that on a multiple choice test, that's OK. But knowing that they can be involved and engaged citizens at whatever capacity they want as adults, that's my big hope.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. Like, never stop learning [CHUCKLES] sounds like what you're saying. Amy and Crystal, I appreciate both of you so much. Thanks for coming on and sharing about the summit.

CRYSTAL JOHNSON: Thank you.

AMY ANDERSON: Thanks again.

NINA MOINI: Take care. Amy Anderson is the executive director for the YMCA Center for Youth Voice, and Crystal Johnson is a 12th grade government and economics teacher at Osseo Public Schools.