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Unit 10 Questions for Young Changemakers
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Unit

10 Questions for Young Changemakers

This unit uses the 10 Questions Framework to explore two examples of youth activism: the 1963 Chicago schools boycott and the present-day movement against gun violence launched by Parkland students.

Resources

4

Duration

One week

Subject

  • Civics & Citizenship
  • History
  • Social Studies

Grade

6–12

Language

English — US

Published

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About This Unit

This unit, developed in collaboration with the Democratic Knowledge Project at Harvard University, focuses on two cases of student activism: the 1963 Chicago Public Schools Boycott and the movement against gun violence launched by Parkland high school students in 2018. 

The two cases differ in terms of social and historical context, organization and strategy, and the consequences faced by student participants. Parkland students’ activism greatly benefited from the use of social media, marking a new high point for young people’s civic-political participation in the digital age. The Chicago school boycott, relatively less well known and of a different time, also reveals critical elements of young people’s civic-political participation. 

Both cases offer students the opportunity to reflect on and gain insight into their own civic participation in the world today. When examining each, we can ask, for example: What did the students want to achieve? What were the risks? Was it worth it? What counts as success? And what can we learn from their example?

Essential Questions

The following essential questions provide a framework for exploring this unit’s main ideas and themes:

  • How can young people change the world?
  • How can we use digital media effectively and safely when we "choose to participate?"

Teaching Notes

Before teaching this unit, please review the following information to help guide your preparation process.

This unit investigates a student-led movement against gun violence in Parkland, Florida. While it is an important case study, it is not an easy one to discuss in the classroom: the movement began with horrific violence, and it centers around school safety and gun control policy, topics that divide the nation along partisan lines.

For this reason, we recommend that you be proactive in creating a foundation for reflective and respectful discussion of these events in the classroom. Fostering Civil Discourse provides specific and detailed guidelines and strategies for setting the stage for your work with current events. We especially recommend creating a classroom contract with your students.

Essential Questions: This unit’s essential questions challenge students to make important connections between the historical and contemporary case studies they examine and their own civic participation. We do not expect students to determine a single, “correct” answer. Essential questions are rich and open-ended; they are designed to be revisited over time, and as students explore the content in greater depth, they may find themselves emerging with new ideas, understandings, and questions.

Guiding Questions: Each lesson in this unit includes one or more guiding questions. Unlike the unit’s essential questions, which are broad and open-ended, guiding questions help to direct student inquiry at the lesson level and are aligned with its specific learning objectives. Answering guiding questions requires deep thinking and textual interpretation. Unlike essential questions, guiding questions might have clear answers, which students should be able to support with specific evidence from the lesson to demonstrate their understanding of the content.

Explore the Resources

This unit is made up of the following lessons. Each lesson includes activities and student materials for 1–2 class periods.

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Unit

10 Questions for Young Changemakers

Up Next

Getting to Know the 10 Questions

Students begin thinking about civic engagement in terms of their own passions and identities as they are introduced to the 10 Questions Framework.
Lesson

This unit was created in partnership with the Democratic Knowledge Project, a distributed research and action lab based in the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, identifies, strengthens, and disseminates the knowledge and capacities that civic actors need in order to sustain healthy democratic life. The lab currently has three projects underway: the Declaration Resources Project, the Humanities and Liberal Arts Assessment (HULA) Project, and the Ten Questions for Young Changemakers Framework. Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, is the principal investigator of the Democratic Knowledge Project.

Contributor: Chaebong Nam, Ph.D. Action Civics Specialist

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