What is Civic Life?
Civic Life is the pursuit to the question, how shall we live together? An active civic life recognizes that it is through our own individual and collective knowledge and culturally-responsive actions that we improve and sustain our communities and our democracy.
Civic Life Vision
Learn about new initiatives and strategic goals for 2021-2023 in order to ensure civic learning is meaningful, relevant, inclusive, and available.
Civic Life Lenses
In considering civic life and educating for democracy, these four lenses for civic life anchor the values and goals the district aims to provide in educational experiences for every student. These lenses are to be used throughout the day, across the curriculum, and for all decisions.
Identity and Community
Understanding, recognizing identity and building perspective is at the heart of liberatory thinking, and are foundational for understanding and engaging with others for the public good. This lens recognizes the multiple communities that adults and youth belong to and helps us honor these identities and communities while learning.
Youth Voice and Expertise
As CPS’s majority stakeholder group, youth should have a voice in all aspects of their schooling and in their communities. Youth perspectives are a necessary component for true inclusive partnerships and equitable decision-making. In order for classrooms and schools to promote student agency and authority, youth voices must be valued and elevated, and students should have opportunities to share power with adults.
Participatory Democracy
As one of the first government institutions youth experience independent from of their families, schools should model and promote participatory systems, structures, and values. Together, all students and adults can practice civic skills and habits every day through classroom and community learning, reflection, collaboration, and decision-making.
Critical Literacies
In order to be effective participants, it is essential that we are well-informed. And critical habits and dispositions for consuming and creating information are necessary to be well-informed in today’s rapidly changing, media-dominant, and disinformation-rich world. When living in a culture of continuous and accelerated change, critical perspectives that examine power and address inequity must be practiced daily so that they become inherent. Through this, youth will be able to read the world and shape it.
Civic Life Powerful Practices
These practices shape the way we work together in every classroom, every school, and across the district because we know they will lead to increased academic outcomes, engaged youth, and valued and invested school communities.
