The Undervalued, Essential Art of Preparing Students for Citizenship

Great teachers feel privileged to be where they are, doing what they do. Shreeta Ashley says that watching young people learn to think for themselves is “amazing.”  In 2017 Ashley completed her Masters of Arts in American History and Government, winning the Chairman’s Award for her outstanding performance on the cumulative exam.

After earning a BA in secondary social studies education at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Ashley considered immediate Masters work, to deepen her knowledge of history and government. Others advised her to teach a few years first, to be sure of her calling.

On her first day teaching eighth-grade American history at Edison Preparatory School in Tulsa, Ashley felt sure. Yet several years elapsed before she found a way to begin Masters work. An older teacher, Jennifer Reiter, recommended the MAHG program, talking it up each time they crossed paths at professional development workshops. Reiter, a 2012 graduate of MAHG, had already steered two other Oklahoma teachers to it. She advised they apply for a prestigious Madison Foundation Fellowship, given yearly to one teacher from each state, to fund Masters work in a program that features Constitutional studies. Ashley would be the third Oklahoma Madison Fellow to enroll in MAHG at Reiter’s instigation—only a few months before Reiter succumbed to a terminal illness.

A Broad Grounding in American History and Government

Many Madison Fellows enter the MAHG program because other fellows recommend it. They say it’s challenging, but offers the broadest possible grounding in American history and governmental institutions. Ashley embraced the work.

Beginning in MAHG’s interactive online program, Ashley studied with Professor Scott Yenor, who assigned a weekly essay. “This kept me honest,” Ashley said; to write the essay, she had to read all the primary documents assigned for the week, even as she taught full time. After two more courses with Yenor, she’d built stamina for whatever was assigned.

This included the required course on the long-winded and ideologically driven progressive era statesmen. “I did not want to take it. Yet it is one of the classes I learned the most from.” As an eighth-grade teacher of American history from the colonial period through the Civil War, Ashley reverenced the Founders. The Progressives, she discovered, challenged the Founders’ idea of democracy. “I learned to articulate the opposing arguments,” Ashley said. “I also learned how our expectations of government have evolved.”

Sharing the Conversation With Students

Midway in her studies, Ashley moved to the 12^th grade at Edison Prep, to teach government, AP US government, and economics. The political science component of the MAHG program supplied the content knowledge she now needed. “Every class gave me new resources at the time I needed them, and the kids really benefited. I would say, ‘In the course I’m taking, we’ve been discussing what causes political party realignment.’ The students felt really special that I invited them to talk about what we as teachers had discussed the night before.”

Ashley wasn’t eager to travel to Ashland for required summer seminars there; it meant ignoring family needs.  “But now I’m glad I had those weeks away, when I could focus on the work.” Class discussions in Ashland often occur as teachers sit in a large square. Seeing that people more willingly share ideas when they can see each other, Ashley decided to rearrange her own classroom. “With 40 desks in my room, it took a while to figure out. But I got them in a U shape that wraps around my desk at one end of the room and around the smart board at the other.”

Forty desks? Ashley explained that her classes at Edison Preparatory High School averaged 35 students each—40 if the course was required for graduation. She taught seven sections a day, with one 45-minute period to plan her three courses—as long as she was not needed to fill in for absent teachers. Many of her colleagues, discouraged by the large classes and non-stop schedule, resigned mid-year.

The Critical Role of Social Studies Teachers

In 2019, Ashley moved to Plano, Texas, where she teaches 8^th grade US history and PACE (Plano Academic and Creative Education) at Carpenter Middle School. PACE is an interdisciplinary program for gifted and talented students; it draws connections between history, literature, and art to broaden students’ understanding of human society and human potential.

Carpenter Middle School “serves a much more diverse population than my last school,” Ashley says, and it gives teachers “a lot more support.” Ashley’s four US history sections top out at 26 students, while her smaller of two PACE classes has seven students. With a less hectic schedule, Ashley will make time to mentor younger teachers. She wants her colleagues to grow in skills and confidence, so they will stay in the profession.

The Critical Role of Social Studies Teachers

Effective, motivated educators preserve democracy, Ashley says. “Since the Founding, we’ve known that we need an educated populace for democracy to thrive. For education to happen, all you need is a good teacher. Put them with students at any academic level, and magic happens.”

Good civics teachers are well grounded in American history and understand the Constitutional framework of our government. They help students realize that, “while not everything Americans have done is good, we’ve been given a framework that allows us to reform ourselves and move forward.”

Both younger and older adolescents have arrived in Ashley’s classroom unaware of our system of balanced powers. “Many think the President is all-powerful; they are very surprised to learn Congress has checks on his power. They have almost zero knowledge of the courts.” When she taught eighteen-year-olds, she challenged their indifference about voting, picked up from parents who see government as unresponsive. “I reminded them of the efforts some groups in our history made to keep other groups from voting.  Why would people spend time and energy on this if voting doesn’t matter? Once students grasp this, they realize they should register at the polls,” Ashley says.

The Habits of Self-Government

Ashley teaches other habits needed by self-governing people, such as taking responsibility for one’s own actions and peacefully managing disputes. She insists that students speak with her about incomplete assignments, rather than allowing their parents to run interference for them. When students complain about classmates, she urges them to talk through their differences.

At Edison Preparatory School, a student confided suspicions of a classmate’s “racism.” Another teacher had confronted students with a problem: how would they handle the presence of the “n” word in an autobiography all were reading? A white student responded, “What’s the big deal? You hear that word all the time in rap music. We should just say it.” To the student who was offended, Ashley said that different ethnic groups in America carry different memories of America’s racial history. Her classmate “grew up in a different part of town, interacting with different people. She didn’t mean to malign another race; she just didn’t understand why what she said was hurtful.” Later, the student who had complained opened a conversation with her classmate. “Although they still disagreed about whether to read the word aloud in class, they now understood each other’s perspective. My student no longer felt her classmate was racist.

“No one is born knowing how to talk to people who have different life experiences,” Ashley said. “Part of what I’m here for is to teach those skills.”