A real world show and tell

NORTH KINGSTOWN — To keep civics from coming across as a snore, social studies teachers at North Kingstown High School have made their subject more like shop. They put the tools of democracy in students’ hands and required them to make something.

On Wednesday evening in the cafeteria, about 150 students showed off what they made in democracy class, and the community, including state and local elected leaders and even U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha, came in to give the projects a little more sanding and a final polish.

The assignment has been the same since 2007: Pick a concern you care about. It could be as local as the high school track or as global as the cost to the environment of fossil fuel use.

Then each student must ponder: “How can you demonstrate that it’s a problem? What do you suggest we do about it?,” Social Studies Department Chairman Lawrence Verria said. And finally: “How would you make that happen for real?”

Then the students take action. Out come the tools: surveys, petitions, news releases, research, letters to the editor or government officials, presentations and preparing for anticipated push-back, Verria said.

The pass-fail class is required for graduation. Most take the semester-long class as juniors. Students of all levels are mixed together.

“It’s a microcosm of America,” he said.

For the finale, Dialogues i n D e m o c r a c y N i g h t , students sum up their projects on a presentation board and prepare to discuss them with guests. Besides mom and dad, everyone on the town council and school committee was invited, as were the state’s general officers and members of the General Assembly w h o r e p r e s e n t N o r t h Kingstown.

Tom Patterson said the event “feels like a trade show.” He and his wife, Lisa Tener, have two children, and their older son, Will, 16, brought attention to a dangerous intersection near their house.

“It was good to see them interacting with real world problems in a serious way,” Tom Patterson said.

T h e d i s p l a y b o a r d behind Reymundo Santana, 17, son of Christina Angel-Vega, featured a noose prominently and used syringes for the letter “I” in the title “Abolishing the Death Penalty.” His research said that capital crime is not lower in states with the death penalty, and that keeping an inmate on death row until appeals are exhausted costs $90,000 a year more per inmate on average than housing that inmate in the general population.

One guest challenged Santana by asking if he would support the death penalty if his own mother was the murder victim. He had an answer ready: “If you really think about it, life in prison without possibility of parole is really worse than the death penalty,” he said.

Robert Shamirian, 16, son of Bob and Dianne Shamirian, and Michael Emby, 17, son of Gerard and Jane Emby, had a c a m p a i g n t o g e t n e w starting blocks for the boys track and field team. Their letter published in the Standard Times was mounted on their display, and they said Town Councilman Kerry McKay stopped by to say the high school was probably still using the same blocks he used when he was on the track team

C a r o l i n e G a r d n e r , 16, daughter of Valerie and Ross Gardner, had painted her display pink and bought Curvey Barbies to pose on a runway to make her point that marketing discrimination in favor of impossibly thin and extremely tall fashion models should be stopped.

She would work for laws requiring models to be above a certain body mass index and for ads to carry a disclaimer if the photos have been changed to make the models look thinner.

As her father carried the Barbies, still standing on their runway, out as the event ended, her mother summed up the evening: “Good projects,” she said. “These kids are thinking. They care about the world.”

Verria said the purpose of the class was “not about making more politicians.” It’s about making sure each future adult is “empowered to be an engaged citizen.”

— dnaylor@ providence-journal.com

(401) 277-7411

On Twitter: @donita22