PBS creates civics lessons for teachers

CASPER — Less than 25% of eighth graders are proficient in civics, and PBS is trying to combat that. In partnership with GBH, which is the primary PBS station out of Boston, PBS LearningMedia has put together a collection of civics resources, lesson plans and activities for primary and secondary education teachers.

“The new collection will draw on media to engage students, spark their interest in civics, and promote the active learning of skills by connecting the basic principles from the nation’s founding documents to issues they care about in their everyday lives,” said Seeta Pai, executive director of education at GBH.

Nine states and the District of Columbia require a full year of government or civics to graduate high school, according to the American Federation of Teachers. Thirty additional states require a half year of civics education, but the other 11 states have no requirement.

Wyoming does not require a civics-specific course to graduate, but the state does incorporate civics into social studies standards.

Based on scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress’s civics assessment, only 22% of eighth-grade students have a proficient or advanced understanding of civics in 2022. The civics assessment was given to 7,800 eighth graders across 410 schools.

Director of Social Studies Curriculum and Instruction at GBH Sue Wilkins was one of the leaders in creating the collection.

“We know that teachers just do what fits their teaching style, what fits their students, what fits their curricular needs,” Wilkins said. “So we designed this to be very adaptable, and they can pick and choose, obviously, what’s relevant to them.”

Currently, the civics collection has around 80 resources, but there will be 188 once the collection is complete.

The collection should be completed by the end of the calendar year.

Each resource — whether it be a video, interactive lesson or timeline — comes with teaching tips and student resources. The teaching tips are like short lesson plans that include guiding questions and the applicable civic skill. Student resources include activities, discussion questions and vocabulary sheets.

Teachers are able to link the lessons to their Google classrooms for ease of use.

For the interactive lessons, students have the option to print or save the files in a way that is easy for the teacher to grade.

The resources in the civics collection are a combination of gathered resources from partners like GBH, the Center for Civic Education, the Bill of Rights Institute and Wyoming PBS. According to Wilkins, a majority of the resources were actually created for this collection.

“They’re looking for shorter learning moments, essentially supplemental resources that they can add to their existing curricula,” said Wilkins about why they curated the website in the way that they did.

Wilkins and Pai said that this collection allows more accessibility, both in barriers to entry and disability access. They said that the length of videos, type of documents and leading questions eliminates a barrier to access to students because they will “have a response, have a reaction, have a first impression that they can share and get engaged in the conversation.”

The resources are accessible to students with disabilities who use accessibility tools like closed captioning, according to Pai.

Pai also said that there will eventually be Spanish translations of the resources.

“In order for America to remain a free and prosperous nation, it is important that rising generations understand our history, the sacrifices made to sustain our freedoms, and the role and responsibility of each citizen,” said Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Last month, the state launched its own collection of civics resources.

However, the state resource is more similar to a library or repository of resources from other organizations as opposed to PBS’s created resources. The state’s collection does not come with lesson plans or student activities to go along with each resource.

Both PBS’s tool and the state’s will tell teachers how the resources align with state standards.

In order to see state standards on PBS’s site, a teacher must be logged in.