A 21st C. Approach to Teaching the Legislative Process - and Activism

I've got a dinner date in 30 minutes with my wife to celebrate our getting out of our second year rental contract in Seoul without losing $25,000 (long story), so I'm going to treat this post the way teachers and testers expect students to show what sort of writer they are on timed tests: winging it, on the fly, with a prayer. Or you can look at it as Ye Olde Free-Write.

The idea, hoping to playfully thorn Robert Pondiscio's 21st-Century-skills-allergic side at Core Knowledge, is this: throw out the textbook (or at least put it under the desk) for the unit in US Government or US History on the Legislative Process - you know how ideas become bills and then maybe laws in Washington - and use (you ready, Robert?) the interwebs to actively learn it and use critical thinking and authentic writing in the process, with a healthy dose of collaboration, using a certain wiki to find RSS feeds for Google Reader.

Here's the wikiHow, our new and improved textbook ("It's FREE!"):

How to Track US Legislation and Congress

Want to be involved in politics now that you've registered and voted? The Internet makes it easier than ever to stay in the loop and get involved. Find out what is happening in the Senate and House by following the steps below.

1. Bookmark these sites:.
   • Thomas, maintained by the Library of Congress, provides legislative information to the public (and to Congress). The most useful features are:
     • Lookup any bill to learn what it is about, its status and sponsors.
     • Links to the House of Representatives and the Senate.

   • Govtrack - a non partisan resource for tracking Congressional activity. Its most useful feature is sending alerts for any area of interest.
   • OpenCongress.org - track legislation by a number of criteria.
   • Congress.org - a generic advocacy site. Includes posts by individuals and advocacy groups.
   • USA.gov - main portal to US government agencies, services, etc.

2. Find your Representative and Senators. On Govtrack, click on Members of Congress and enter a US zip code. You'll be given the names of your two Senators and Representative as well as a map of the congressional district. You can also get a full list of members of the House and Senate. Keep the address and phone numbers handy when an important issue comes up. News reports sometimes say that phones are ringing off the hook in congressional offices.
3. Go to the web sites of your Senators and Representative. Sign up for their newsletters to find out what they think is important. You'll also find out which committees they are on.
4. Find out what committees your Representative and Senators are on. They are listed on Govtrack as well as the member's site. Often one of the three will sit on a committee that covers your area of interest.
5. Track what's going on in the House this week. Both major political parties have a whip who posts a notice of bills appearing for a floor vote that week along with a one line summary.
• Democratic Whip - click on The Daily Whipline.
• Republican Whip - click on Daily Whipping Post - Full Notice.

6. Track what's going on in the House today. Click on the Office of the Clerk - Legislative Activities to get a nearly real time summary of actions on the House floor.
7. Find active legislation by topic for both the Senate and House. This page provides the bill number for legislation currently in the pipeline or that has become public law ("P.L.").
8. Find the status of a bill. On the Thomas site, enter the bill number, such as HR 100. A more sophisticated query can be entered here.
9. Learn what the committees are doing. Click for the House or Senate. The real work in Congress gets done in the committees. Tracking the activities of committees also:
• Lets you know what's in the pipeline before the final vote.
• In many cases you can send a letter to the committee, which at least gets published as part of their proceedings. For example, the House Ways and Means committee posted witness testimony and citizen submissions for a 2006 hearing on Health Savings Accounts.

10. Watch CSPAN broadcasts of major events - debates and votes in the House and Senate, committee hearings, press conferences, etc.
11. Get email alerts on issues important to you. Sign up for the Vote Monitor weekly newsletter or on Govtrack
12. Craft your message so the Senator or Representative will listen.
13. Post a note to your Representative or Senator. Senators and Representatives make it easy to post messages by their constituents. They likely prefer posts because of security issues with email and snail mail.
14. Call your Senators and Representative. Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and give them your zip code. They'll find who represents you and connect the call to the right office. See tips below for how to find a toll free number to the Capitol Switchboard.
15. Find Special interest groups on the internet. Go to Votesmart.org, select a senator or representative and click on Interest Group Ratings. This will ultimately lead you to the interest groups for your issues of interest, and links to their websites. You can also use a search engine with a bill number (e.g. "HR 1234") or a phrase related to issues of interest.
16. Track rollcall votes. You need to know the date or the vote number to find how people voted, but you can also get information from Congress.org.

(Okay, I lied. In a free-write or timed essay, those still being very paper and pencil, last-century rites even now in 2009, copying and pasting the above would not be possible. Discuss.)

The unit objectives:

Students will be able to:

1. Explain the legislative process in the federal government from a bill's introduction to its passage through committees, subcommittees, House and Senate votes, and presidential signing or vetoing.
2. Narrate and analyze a case study of one specific bill from its introduction to its completion.
3. Write a rhetorically competent letter to a congressperson about a current bill under consideration.

(My wife just called. Time's running out.)

The process:

1. Students, in pairs, will identify an issue they're interested in - education, the environment, health care, etc - and subscribe to one of the RSS feeds linked on WikiHow above about pending legislation in their chosen topic.

2. Using the RSS feed, each pair will select one bill concerning their topic as a case study. They will read the bill, research the issue (using WikiHow's Research Legislation if You Are an Intern on Capitol Hill? I haven't checked it out yet), and take a position on the bill - for, against, or with modifications. All pairs will give a presentation on the bill and their position on it in a class or two dedicated to these presentations.

3. Each pair will contribute to a regularly-updated class blog discussing the fate of its bill as it goes through the stages of the legislative process.

4. Each student in each pair will write a letter at least once urging either their congresspersons, relevant committees, or the president to consider their position on the bill, using the "Craft your message so the Senator or Representative will listen" Step 12 link above - and send it to the intended recipient.

5. All students will write a summative essay describing the legislative process accurately, followed by a reflective piece on their experience of participatory democracy.

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Okay, my wife is going to kill me. Time's up. All I can say is this: this strikes me as a very real and unschooly way for students not to suffer the "pretend learning" they're so often afflicted with in school, but to do for real what so many of their parents - and the rest of us - never do: practice assertive, informed citizenship.

Off to dinner. Thoughts? (And Robert, you know I'm joshing.)

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