Identity:
What Kind of Citizen?
This lesson in action:
Lesson Objectives
Students will be able to:
- Offer multiple meanings of the term ‘citizen’
- Describe three different conceptions of good citizenship
- Reflect on their own emerging civic identity
Learning Standards
- LfJ 1. Students will develop positive social identities based on their membership in multiple groups in society.
- LfJ 3. Students will recognize that people’s multiple identities interact and create unique and complex individuals.
- LfJ 4. Students will express pride, confidence, and health self-esteem without denying the value and dignity of other people.
Learning Activities: If you have 15 minutes
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Greeting:
What superpower would you love to have?
Reading:
Look at the dictionary definition of citizenship.
Ask Students:
- What are the two different meanings of the term, citizen? (Help them see that one definition is a legal term, another is more about being part of a community)
- What do you think it means to be a good citizen?
Initiative:
Explain that, with regard to being a member of a community, two scholars Joel Westheimer and Joe Kahne, have written about there being different ways to be a good citizen.
Guide students through their definitions of three different types of citizenship—personally responsible, participatory, and justice-oriented—using the example of a community where not everyone has all the food they need.
Ask Students:
- What type(s) of citizens does a community need? Why?
Learning Activities (continued): If you have 45 minutes
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Ask Students:
- Which type(s) of citizen are you being raised to be?
- [Work in pairs to answer] What is a challenge in your own community? How might these different types of citizens contribute to solving this issue?
When students are finished, give each pair a chance to share out the issue they focused on, and how the three different types of citizens might try to address this issue
Learning Activities (continued): If you have 2 hours
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Initiative:
Read to students “The Parable of the Starfish”
Ask Students:
- What is the moral of the story?
- Which type of citizen does this story seem to most value?
- Do you agree?
Initiative:
Read to students “The Parable of the River”
Ask Students:
- What is the moral of the story?
- Which type of citizen does this story seem to most value?
- Do you agree?
If possible, identify an upcoming real-life opportunity within your school or local community where students can take on one or more of these citizenship roles (see Slide 24 for an example)
Debrief:
- What did you like about today’s lesson?
- Did you learn anything new about yourself or anyone else?
- What could make it better?