2003 Summit Service Projects
Downers Grove North High School
Downers Grove South High School
Immaculate Heart of Mary High School
St. Gregory the Great High School
Downers
Grove North High School
For our service
project, we decided that we would give a presentation to each Law in American
Society and Political Science class in our school on the Total Information
Awareness (TIA) project and using torture on U.S. soil. We wanted to help
educate our fellow classmates on what was being decided on and get some of
their points of view.
We started off each
class with a lesson from the 2003 Summit curriculum in which students make a
human graph and asked the students a few questions about TIA. We asked for five
volunteers, designated a side of the room as “agree” and the other side
“disagree,” and let the students discuss the issues. After every few questions,
we informed the students about what would be involved with the TIA and its
potential pros and cons.
After the human
graph, we handed out some information about torture and held a group
discussion.
Many students had strong
opinions on the morality of torture, and where and when it should be used.
Again, we led a discussion, advised the students about the pros and cons of
torture, and got some great feedback.
It was unfortunate
that we only had 50 minutes for each class because the students wanted to keep
discussing each topic, so we had a little run over in every period. It was
really interesting to see the desire that many students had to learn more about
how their future will be affected by both of these topics. We learned many new
points of view that couldn’t be brought up on the survey and also how some
students wanted to help get involved with these potential acts and their future.
Every presentation gave us great feedback which we will use to help communicate
other students’ views at the Summit.
Downers
Grove South High School
For our Youth Summit
service project, we chose to
focus on
the issue of expansion of search and seizure powers of agencies of the federal
government.
We visited selected
Social Studies elective classes at our school and gave them the 2003 Illinois
Youth Summit survey to take. We then explained some of the controversial
sections of the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act of
2001 in order to help them better understand this issue.
After we made our
presentations, we led the students in a discussion about the issues involved
with expanding search and seizure powers of
agencies of the federal government.
We had the students
make arguments for and against expansion of these powers so that everyone had
the opportunity to see different sides of the issue. Everyone had the
opportunity to share their thoughts on these issues and hear other
perspectives.
Farragut
Career Academy
Farragut
Career Academy High School’s service project is a website based on the topic of
“Using Torture on Suspected Terrorists.” The website is set up to educate
viewers on the subject of torture on terrorists with a variety of student work
and other resources.
The
participating class in the project, a sophomore U.S. History class, was very
much involved in researching and reviewing important information on torture and
the newly proposed torture warrant by Alan Dershowitz. Much of the reviewing of
torture and its characteristics was done in the classroom and the students
completed their work for the website at home. The idea to create a website was
proposed by a student, who had prior experience in creating website, and then
presented it to the class.
The
class liked the idea and then the project was underway. Students also asked
friends, with various skills such as drawing and writing, to participate by
submitting their work to be displayed on the website. This project was a new
learning experience for the whole class. The class learned about the torture
warrant proposed by Alan Dershowitz, the pros and cons of this method, and with
the information learned, they were able to take a position for or against the
method of using torture on suspected terrorists.
The website’s URL is
www.freewebs.com/farragutcrfc
. It includes essays, articles, poems,
interviews, stories, a student gallery, and
information from a mock
Town Meeting.
Students are also encouraged to speak out
about this issue through the website’s chat-room.
Immaculate
Heart of Mary High School
For
our Youth Summit Service Project, we educated students at our school on all
three of the Summit issues: the Total Information Awareness (TIA) project;
federal expansion of search and seizure powers; and using torture on suspected
terrorists.
We
passed out the 2003 Illinois Youth Summit survey to all the students at
Immaculate Heart of Mary high school, and then collected them for review.
Then we visited several different classes
and led them in lessons on the issues that we found in the youth summit
curriculum.
Finally, we plan to
go back to the classes that we have done lessons in and give them the youth
summit survey to take a second time. This will help us to see what other
students at our school learned about the issues and record changes in opinions
and knowledge.
Jones
College Prep High School
Students
at Jones College Prep High School performed their service learning project
within the community our school is located in.
First, we surveyed students in the school about their pressing
concerns.
We filtered through the
variety of
answers we received and
chose several questions to take with us to Washington, D.C.
In
D.C., we met with Congressman Danny Davis, the representative for our area, and
brought our questions to him.
Our
questions were focused on the Summit
topics: The Total Information Awareness project; federal expansion of
search and seizure powers; and using torture on suspected terrorists.
Congressman Davis graciously sat with us for
a great deal of time and patiently worked with us to answer our concerns.
Following the meeting, we discussed and
recorded his responses. Upon our return, we reported his answers back to the
students at school.
We believe that getting
involved in politics is an important step in ensuring that our voices are heard
in important future governmental decisions.
Mundelein
High School
For
our Youth Summit service project, two student representatives from every U.S.
Government class at Mundelein High School are creating a PowerPoint
presentation on the topic of terrorism and the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001.
The presentation will focus on whether or
not the rights of Americans are secure under the USA PATRIOT Act and what
Americans need to know to be informed.
Rather
than promoting a position on this issue, we are putting together a variety of
information and arguments for and against the USA PATRIOT Act as it relates to
terrorism.
Our goal is to raise the
consciousness of students at Mundelein about how to balance safety and freedom
in the aftermath of September 11, by giving them enough information to make
their own decisions about the potential effectiveness of the USA PATRIOT Act.
Currently,
our team of students is conducting and organizing research and reviewing our
work to ensure that we present a balanced view. In May, the presentation will
be shown to all juniors and seniors at Mundelein – approximately 1,000 students
- in their homeroom classes. In this way, we can share what we have learned
from the Youth Summit with other students at our school.
Francis
W. Parker High School
For
our service project, the students in the Civil Liberties and the American State
class have planned to implement a service project that will involve educating
other students in our school on the issues that we are learning about as
participants in the Youth Summit.
We
chose to do a teach-back to an 8
th
grade class of 15 students in our
school.
One reason why we feel it was
important to work with that grade level is because we wanted to promote a
connection between the middle school and the high school classes at our school.
Another reason why we wanted to work with 8
th
graders was because we
feel that at this grade level, they would benefit from learning more about
current issues.
The
nineteen students in the Civil Liberties and American State class will prepare
to briefly introduce the Summit issues to the 8
th
grade class on the
day that the service learning project will be implemented.
Depending on which issue intrigues the 8
th
graders the most, the summit students will then proceed to giving the 8
th
graders instructions for taking that portion of the Summit Survey.
Then we will do an activity in the
curriculum book that corresponds to the topic that the 8
th
graders
have chosen.
After the activity, will
go over the results of the survey and compare these numbers to that of the ones
that have already been compiled from the senior class.
In implementing our
service project, we will be raising the awareness of current issues.
We want to show both sides of the issues,
pro and con, so that the 8
th
graders can feel like they can have
their own opinion and take their own stand on an issue.
We hope to encourage the 8
th
graders to take notice in these topics and how they create changes in the
United States.
Perspectives
Charter School
The participating
students of Perspectives Charter School conducted a small-scale but effective
service-learning project with our school’s junior class. Student Advisory
Committee members assisted the teacher in distributing the 2003 Youth Summit
surveys and helped lead a discussion about all three of the Summit issues.
The students also
invited guest speaker Damien Joyner, Director of High School Civil Liberties
Education for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois,
to help clarify their thinking and answer
questions on the issues.
As a culminating
event and assessment, all juniors participated in a series of “fish-bowl”
discussions about the Summit issues.
Discussions were lively, civil and challenging.
The Perspectives
Charter School hopes that this experience made that junior class more
interested in current issues in public policy and more likely to be involved in
the political process in the future.
Senn
High School
For our service-learning project, we filmed
three public service announcements. The first public service
announcement examined whether the FBI now has too much power or a necessary
amount in order to protect people in our society. The second public service
announcement showed different opinions of the question: What is terrorism?
The third public service announcement helped
to educate members of our community about the effects of the Total Information
Awareness (TIA) project on everyday people.
The people involved
in the public service announcements were mostly Senn High School
students. The faculty also gave a helping
hand. The public service announcements were
carried out in the classroom as well as in the community.
While working on the public service announcements, we had the opportunity to
use equipment generously lent to us by Street Level Youth Media, an
organization working out of the Broadway Armory.
The public service
announcements will first be shown to the students and faculty at
Senn High School then later in the
community. Working on this project helped us learn how to work in groups. It
also taught us how to use audio-visual equipment and all the steps needed in
order
to make a video. The most important thing that we learned was how to share our
ideas and respect different perspectives.
St.
Gregory the Great High School
For
our Youth Summit service project, we chose to focus on the issue of torturing
suspected terrorists.
We
studied lessons in the Youth Summit curriculum to learn more about the issue
and followed up by doing our own research on it.
We
then visited classes at two different high schools in our area where we first
had students take the portion of the Youth Summit survey that asked questions
about torture.
We then led the
students in an activity about torture from the Youth Summit curriculum. After
this, we led a discussion about torture where we asked students to exchange
their opinions about when they thought torture should be used or when they
thought torture should not be used.
Everyone learned something by listening to each other’s views.
Steinmetz
High School
Our students were
most interested in the topic of torturing suspected terrorists to gain
information.
The classes had much
heated debate and discussion about this proposal.
We wanted other students to think critically about this policy
and the issue of “freedom vs. safety” within our country.
Thus we decided to present this topic to
other classes at our school to learn what their thoughts were.
In each of our
classes that used the curriculum, four students were selected to “teach”
another teacher’s classes one day.
We
selected one sophomore class, one junior class, and one senior class.
In each of these classes, one of the four
CRFC students would introduce the topic, another would stimulate the discussion
towards the positive side, a third student would stimulate the discussion
towards the negative side, and a fourth students would administer a survey at
the conclusion of the class.
We were interested
in knowing if there was a marked difference in opinions based on these factors:
the year level of the students, any changes in views prior to and following the
presentations, and the types of questions and issues brought up in each
class.
We knew however that each group
of students might present the topic differently.
The three classes
were enthusiastic about this issue and the fact that their peers were teaching
the class for the day.
The seniors were
more involved in the discussion and activities and seemed to understand the
issues better than the sophomores.
However, each class brought up slightly different arguments.
The survey results show a slight majority
favored torture as a means to gather information needed for the security of our
nation and its people.
The article about
this topic and several student’ responses will be published in the May issue of
our school newspaper.
We also asked a
number of social studies teachers to present this issue in their classrooms.
The project caused many of the Steinmetz students to become aware of the larger
issue of security vs. rights in our democracy.
Stevenson
High School
On April 10, our law
club conducted a service project with 7th and 8th grade social studies students
at Aptakisic Junior High. Our goal was to help students examine one of the
solutions our government has proposed in our ongoing response to
terrorism.
We had the students
evaluate the Total Information Awareness (TIA) project in two ways; to determine
if it would effectively reduce the threat of terrorism and to determine
ultimately whether the program should be implemented. Before our visit to
Aptakisic, we brainstormed ideas as to how we could approach the 7
th
and 8
th
graders with such a complicated idea. We came up with the
following lesson plan:
We conducted the
Human Graph Activity supplied in the CRFC
Resource Guide
by reading
aloud statements related to TIA and asking students to react to statements that
they hear by standing in front of the part of the graph that corresponds to
their opinion.
Then we briefly
explained the goal of TIA and its proposed benefits using an overhead.
We then led the class in a discussion of the
negatives and the positives of implementing the program and put their responses
in a T-chart.
Finally, we took a vote
from the class… and 15 of the students voted in favor of implementing the TIA
project, 7 voted no and 3 were undecided.
Our visit enhanced
our perspective on how this particular student demographic might feel about the
TIA project.
Despite their initial
hesitance with the lesson, the students began to feel more at ease with the
activity once they saw that we validated their opinions and comments.
Their level of interest and willingness to
participate was quite high by the end of our visit, once we began weighing the
pros and cons of implementing the project.
Now we understand
that our government’s actions in response to September 11 not only affect our
immediate security concerns, but they also call into question the government’s
need to infringe upon our rights to privacy. Most importantly, these actions
are subject to debate and discussion because our government is an instrument of
the people. Our visit to Aptakisic proved that not only were we teaching younger
students, but we were teaching ourselves as well.
Streamwood
High School
The
goal of our service project is to emphasize civil discourse as an appropriate
response to the events of September 11.
Seventy-five students from a variety of law-related education courses
will be attending a half-day workshop at Streamwood High School.
Segments of the curriculum from the 2003
Youth Summit will be presented with lots of time set aside for discussion.
All students who attend will have an
opportunity to actively participate.
We
believe that our fellow high school students are quite capable of discussing
challenging topics related to terrorism in a civil manner.
There are no simple solutions to the policy
issues addressed, but after listening to each other, we anticipate that
students can all agree to disagree.
A permanent visual
will be created to feature the efforts of those students who participated in
this year’s Summit activities.
Williamsfield
High School
The
Youth Summit student participants of Williamsfield High School formed a group
called the Youth Summit Student Coalition of Williamsfield (YSSCW), consisting
of six students.
As the YSSCW, we
focused on an issue related to the Total Information Awareness project (TIA)
that directly affects high school students.
We are concerned about the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 that mandated that
secondary public schools release students’ names and telephone numbers to
military service branches, colleges and other educational institutions, and
prospective employers, unless those individuals signed an “opt-out” form on
their own behalf.
For our
service project, YSSCW decided to inform students and community members about
this option to decide whether or not they wanted information collected by the
High School to be released to the federal government.
In order to do this, we took the following steps:
·
We developed an
“opt-out” form for parents or students over 18 to sign.
We obtained an outline for these forms from
the American Civil Liberties Union website.
·
We created an
information sheet to inform parent and students of the new guidelines and
attached this to the form.
·
We gave a
presentation on the issue and passed out “opt-out” forms to all 90 high school
students at our school during student activity period.
·
We sent out
informative columns in two consecutive monthly school newsletters that go to
every taxpayer in the community.
·
We submitted an
article to the local newspaper informing the community of the provisions of the
U.S.A. Patriot Act and the “opt-out” process.
·
We collected
signed forms and turned them into the office to create a new list of students
consenting to the release of their personal information.
Woodruff
High School
At Woodruff High
School, the goal of our service project was to survey tenth and eleventh grade
students to determine an area in which to develop a future plan for educating
our student body in one of three areas of discussion for this year’s Illinois
Youth Summit. We then analyzed survey results, developed a lesson plan for
selected classes, organized a “Town Hall” formatted discussion over the
selected area of interest, and conducted a meeting with selected classes.
After carrying out
our survey of tenth and eleventh grade classes, we found that the questions
related to “Torture of Suspected Terrorists” had the most unusual results. That
is, they were not in-sync with other values here at the school. Based on these
results, we developed a lesson plan for teaching five classes (115 students) in
the school.
We developed the
lesson plan based on guidance from our history teacher. The discussion and
activities included student definitions through brainstorming about “terror,”
“torture,” and “rights;” a student-led discussion about different types of
torture; and a differentiation between “lethal” and “non-lethal” torture.
Arrangements were made through our school for use of the auditorium, two
podiums, a sound system, local press and student newspaper coverage, and a
photo-op for our invited speaker from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
of Peoria.
Through this service
project, we learned to plan, reproduce, tabulate and analyze survey data,
develop a teaching plan based upon analysis of the survey, and team-teach
lessons we created in five classes.
We
were able to clarify for ourselves and the 115 students at our school what the
term “rights” means and how rights relate to citizens and non-citizens.
We were also able to have the experience of
planning a school-wide event and coordinating facilities needed for a
large-scale
activity.
Young
Magnet High School
The
goal of our service project was to educate students at Whitney Young Magnet
High School about The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, the Total Information Awareness
(TIA) project, and new search and seizure procedures being used by the federal
government. All of the students in our law class were involved in preparing a
lesson to deliver to Ms. Lent's 10
th
and 11
th
grade U.S.
History classes.
We
developed our service project by first learning about TIA,
the USA PATRIOT Act and new search and
seizure techniques.
We then organized
into three groups for each of Ms. Lent's classes and developed unique lesson
plans for each group.
Individuals were
assigned research and/or organizational tasks to be completed by certain
dates.
We then led each of Ms. Lent's
classes through
our plans, answered
questions, and encouraged them to learn more and write their elected officials
with questions and concerns.
We
learned that once you know you are able to teach something to someone else, you
have really learned the material.
We
found it very encouraging that so many of her U.S. History classes were
interested in the material and had very interesting comments and questions.
Next year we would encourage anyone working
on this service project to get the information out to more people, possibly by
creating an informative pamphlet or holding a school-wide assembly.