Maine Civic Digest: January 2025

Dear Friend,

As a teacher, this year has been both inspiring and challenging. My city, Waterville, established the second municipal youth council in the state, empowering young people to participate in local government. Some students are craving such opportunities to become more engaged. Simultaneously, I have noticed a concerning and perceptible increase in the number of students discouraged about political processes and institutions, often pessimistic about the value of their opinions or efforts and their own ability to make change in their communities. 

As an educator, this year I have been trying to reconcile these disparate experiences: new local opportunities for civic engagement coupled with heightened apathy. I believe a solution lies in providing more young people today with direct instruction and practice in how to communicate, collaborate, and become educated and empowered to make change on issues of importance to them. 

This month you will find resources about how to have constructive dialogue that moves beyond civil discourse toward productive discourse. Check past issues for numerous resources on this and related topics to better support our youth to engage in creating their future.  

Jessica Graham

Social Studies Teacher

Co-editor, Maine Civic Digest

Waterville, Maine

With our focus on teaching students constructive dialogue and civil discourse, we highlight the work of the CanWe? Project, which provides opportunities for high school students to learn and practice the skills of dialogue across political and other differences. The project works with cohorts of student leaders in partner schools across Maine who seek to develop school-wide cultures of civil dialogue and civic engagement. Once a year, participating students from across the state gather for a student-led dialogue. Check out this summary to learn more. 

CLASSROOM RESOURCES

• The Constructive Dialogue Institute offers high school teachers multiple resources and tools to help students develop skills to hold conversations on challenging topics. As an example, check out this brief activity to prepare students to have a constructive dialogue.
• Share and discuss this brief video from the Better Arguments Project and talk through the five principles to have a better argument. 
• Check out this guide and numerous resources from the Civil Discourse Project that can be useful for both teachers and students.  
• Support your students to participate in the KQED Youth Media Challenge to share podcasts and journalism with a national audience. Check out the 25 past submissions from Maine as examples to share with your students! 
• Encourage your students to join in the annual Margaret Chase Smith Essay Contest, an annual contest with prizes from the Margaret Chase Smith Library for Maine students.  

Each month we will share findings from reputable sources on youth voting and civic engagement across the country and in Maine. 

This month our focus is on the status of civic empowerment among today’s youth based on data from the YouthTruth Civic Empowerment Project. The September 2024 survey showed the majority of high school students wanted to help others and work across differences to improve society, but less than a third reported they had helped change things for the better (Youth Today, 2024). Educators can help address this gap by providing the critical missing civic skills needed for students to feel empowered and turn their intentions into actions.

Start a Conversation in your Classroom! 

1. Rapidly generate a list of issues students feel they would want to improve in their school, their community and beyond.
2. What barriers do they feel get in the way of their working to create the change they feel is needed.
3. Using the activities in this guidebook, help students become inspired to become more involved.