Civic Education for Classrooms and Community: A Conversation with Shawn McCusker

Elana:

Hello and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week, I sit down with educators, EdTech entrepreneurs, and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing, or content marketing, and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience. And now, let's jump right into today's episode.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. In this episode, I'm sitting down with Shawn McCusker. He is the Senior Director of Professional Learning at EdTech Teacher. I sat down with Shawn to talk about his passion, civic engagement. And we have another episode, the first half of this conversation, when we spoke with Shawn in detail about his favorite tips and takeaways from the book he co-wrote, Becoming Active Citizens. We'll put that link in the show notes if you're interested. But in this episode, we get into all things EdTech.

Shawn has a very robust career journey in EdTech, from being in the classroom all the way up to being in research and evaluation, to training educators. He's had so many vantage points within EdTech. So I wanted to pick his brain about what are the EdTech trends he's excited about. What's overhyped? How does he, when he was in a leadership position, actually pick the technology he wants to use? How does he prioritize? What gets him excited around the world of EdTech in K-12? All of those things. So you can see me and hear me just asking him and poking him, "So what about this? What about that?" and it's full of so much juicy things from a marketing perspective. So stick around. This episode is not to be missed.

ns, is a recent winner of the: 2022

In: 2016

So Shawn, you are here today because you wrote this book, this newly award-winning book too, around civics. Really about meaningful civic education in the United States, and the title is Becoming Active Citizens. So just tell me about your journey on why civics, why now, and how did you get to this, where you got so passionate about, "I need a book about civics and people aren't doing it. I want to see people do it"?

Shawn:

I am very fortunate. I was working for Tom Daccord, who was the CEO of EdTech teacher, and he got us all together for a meeting. And I want to point out I was angry when I got into this meeting because ISTE was in Chicago and I was going to all the social things, and I had to come home to attend the meeting. So I came in a little bit grumpy. But in the meeting, the basic point was we need to be passionate and if we want to be leaders in EdTech, we need to be passionate and pursue things that are going to help educate us and help us inform others. And so in that meeting, my friend and now the CEO of EdTech teacher who purchased it from Tom Daccord, Tom Driscoll, he said he wanted to work on a passion project about civic education.

And I've been a civics teacher my whole career. I'm a social studies teacher at heart. Social studies is my painting. It's the artwork I create. EdTech is just the pastels and the brushes I use to paint a better picture. And so in this meeting, I committed to work with Tom and we started just digging into it, and I just kept falling further and further into the rabbit hole and ultimately started writing articles and doing workshops across the country. That turned into them seeking us out. The funny part is I was actually approached to write a different book on project-based learning. And there were some people I really respected had written great books on project-based learning, and I felt like, "I am passionate about it. I feel like I could write a book," but I wanted to do something different. I spent two and a half years working on that book and I'm glad that it was a topic that my heart was fully into.

So after a little bit, they reached out to us and asked us if we wanted to write a book, and we started, and then the pandemic happened. So it got stalled a little bit. It was a fascinating process. But I have to say what was awesome about it is when you're so deep into something and you've learned so much about it, writing a book was a great outlet for all of that stuff you were so excited about. So how fortunate is that to be so energetic and then be able to put it somewhere? So when you said award-winning, I get goosebumps because that was not how this was supposed to go. I was going to write this weird, educational, niche book on civic education and what we should be doing. And then now, we've won this first place in a Book of the Year award, which was not in the story I imagined. But I'm very, very proud of it and excited that it'll help me share with other people.

Elana:

Yeah. So fast-forward now, you're getting a lot of great praise for the books. You're getting awards. What do you think is resonating most? And I know it obviously depends on who is reading it, if I'm an educator practicing in the classroom versus a leader. But what are the salient points that people are like, "Oh, it's changed my mindset here. I never thought of civic that way," or, "I didn't even know you could do that"?

Shawn:

Right.

Elana:

Of course, these are things that have been resonant to you that may be unexpected because you're so deep and immersed in it, right?

Shawn:

Yeah. It's funny because I have all these things I want to say. The things that I get the most reaction to. One, imagine someone teaching someone how to swim. Imagine if I got the greatest swimmer ever and I had them put together PowerPoints on the best tips for swimming ever and I ran you through a six-month course. Swimming 101, Swimming 102, right? And then when it's over, I give you a certificate, but we never got in the pool. How many parents would let their kid jump into the deep end? And it's asinine to think that way, but that is exactly how we teach civic education. The vast majority of students never participate in a government meeting as part of their civic education courses. They never participate in a simulation of those meetings. They never actually take on a project that seeks to reach out to and activate government to serve their needs, and that's crazy to me.

The number one form of instruction in civic education across the United States, to this day, is lecture. The average teacher can be found leaning on their desk, ruminating about civics, talking about the Supreme Court by telling the story to other people and having them consume it. And the typical student in a civics classroom is passively sitting by listening. But we have known for 25 years that the right way to work involves doing different teaching, which is the next thing that people bring up. People want to talk to me about, "How can we take on this work without getting caught up into the very contentious world of politics?" And as I've said to you before, you can only fix what you are willing to face. And so if we want to make a world where we can talk to each other, recent research says that 40% of Americans have stopped talking to at least one family member because of their political beliefs. On average, it's more than that. It's like two, three, four, five.

On average, families are talking about political issues significantly less than they used to. How do you fix it? How do you bridge the gap if we're not willing to reach out to people? And so the second issue is how can we start having those conversations in class? How can we start having those conversations with our parents and our community? And I think it's not as hard as people will think if you're willing to be transparent and clear about what your objectives are. And then the third thing is people are a little bit surprised when I tell them what a quality civics education program will do for a community. There's something called the trickle-up factor. In communities that institute high quality civic education programs, they see the parents voting more. They see the life expectancy increasing in that community. They're less likely to have potholes and public dangers. They're more likely to have abandoned buildings removed or mitigated simply because the high school started a civics program that taught them how to engage with the government that is meant to serve them anyway.

And I always tell my kids, no one will ever provide you with what you are not willing to ask for. And so how do we ask our government to act in the cause of serving our needs, which is what it's there to do. So in areas where a quality civics education program exists, students are more likely to never take unemployment. They're more likely to get promoted. They're more likely to have a longer life expectancy. They're more likely to have access to medical care. The list is endless of how life has improved. And so if we can find and address these places that are civic deserts, across the board, we have better, more informed participation in our government and people who know how to get the wheels of democracy spinning for them, and I think that that's an important thing to do. I get a lot of people who will ask me about how those things can take place.

Elana:

The irony is that a lot of times, people come into education and go, "Gosh, we have a polarized nation. No one's talking to each other. No one knows how to listen. They're just waiting for their chance to speak." There's this chasm in between it and they come to education to try to fix that because what better way is to empower our youth that are going to be leading our nation in the future? But then they come in and revert to old ways that you're talking about and they wonder why things aren't changing.

Shawn:

Yeah.

Elana:

thing"? Are there [inaudible: 00:12:02

Shawn:

If I were going to challenge any teacher who's teaching civics to any grade level right now, the first thing that you can do that will transform the experience of your students is to ensure that during the course of their civic education, you take them to a government meeting. The school board is a body of government. Go to that meeting. They are voted on by you. They get their power from you to serve you. And you don't have to be a voter to have your elected officials serve you. We serve all of the people who are in our charge. And so you can have a fifth grader go and speak to the school board about what they need.

One class that I thought was really inspiring is the teacher said, "What do you think we need to change about our schools?" They wrote a letter, very respectfully crafted it. Everyone in the class had a chance to add something and put it all together. And then they picked one student who was going to read all of it. And in their name, they went to a school board and they presented their letter, and the school board's like, "Okay," and then instituted some small change for them. If students see their efforts cause a change, they're in forever. They will attend every meeting.

Likewise, if you take students to a meeting and they fail, they are just as likely to stay engaged because they want to understand why it didn't work, right? And it's not so simple as just saying, "I need this." It's generating the public's support, communicating that message, utilizing social media to connect to the needs of the community, demonstrating to your government that this is a group of people that they should respond to. So just start by taking them to a meeting and let them participate in government in whatever way that you can interact. Because the more they interact with government, the more powerful an impact that lasts forever they're going to have.

Elana:

Yes. Oh my gosh, so many yeses in that. It was reminiscent when you were talking about ... I am almost done with Obama's book and I know I'm the last person to read it because it's been out forever. But he talks about that, of really trying to advocate for his community, and all the assumptions he made wrong were way more powerful because he was failing. And he is like, "Why did I fail?"

Shawn:

Yeah.

Elana:

It became more like, "All right. Well, I'm not doing that next time and I'm doing more of this," or whatnot.

Shawn:

Right.

Elana:

We talk about these things and so much, even in the beginning, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to talk about these things that educators talk about. Fail forward, all of these things," but we don't demonstrate it or provide the ability for kids to do it.

Shawn:

If you want to be inspired, go look up ... I believe it was in New Hampshire. There was a junior high class that decided they wanted to get the state to name their school mascot, a particular hawk, as the state mascot. They got someone to sponsor the bill. It made it through committee. It all got supported. They showed up at the State House in order to watch them vote. And then somehow, a group of politicians decided to shout it down and say, "What? Are we going to name a state hotdog next? This is insane. We're wasting our time," and it failed. Well, The Daily Show picked it up and did a report on it, and then it got caught by media, and then the politicians who had fought against it were told, "This is a chance for you to include people in this process. How could you do this?"

So when those kids were fifth graders, this happened. When they were eighth graders, the bill was brought back and they succeeded because after the class was over, they wouldn't stop pushing to get it back again. And that's what I mean. Take your students to government and let them lose because you'll teach lessons there that are important. It isn't just going to vote. There's a lot of citizenshipping to do that isn't voting, and we need to teach the complexity and the depth of citizenship. Not just what your rights are, but what are our responsibilities, right?

Elana:

we went to DC, and it was in: 2017

Shawn:

Yeah.

Elana:

[inaudible: 00:16:22

Shawn:

Right. Well, another great example of that. There's a great example from California, and I wish I could remember the city, but there was a group of girls in engineering and they were part of an engineering club. And if you've ever been to California, homelessness is a very big issue there. It doesn't take much for a family with two working incomes to become homeless if things don't work out, if somebody gets sick. Well, these girls looked around and they decided to do an engineering program where they were going to build a tent with a solar panel so that their friends who lost their homes and who were homeless could have a low-cost tent with a solar panel so that they could recharge their phones, because then their parents could keep applying for jobs because they could keep their phone going.

And so they designed and built a tent that would be low-cost for homeless people, but would provide them with the ability to stay connected to their communications so their parents could get jobs and their kids could do their classwork. And eventually, the city bought it. It became a viable thing that started with students, and they just had to find a way. They built it and then they had to find the path to get it done. And that involves connecting with your government and saying, "I have this need. I can help you meet the needs of the community." I'm always inspired by that story. There's some videos out there of it that are really exciting.

Elana:

t do you call that [inaudible: 00:18:11

Shawn:

So if the goal is to teach students to be effective citizens who can contribute to society, how can you argue that taking the time to be citizens ... The best way for students to learn to be citizens is to be citizens. So if you don't have time to take them to bodies of government, then you really aren't committed to teaching them how to interact with their government. The goal isn't for them to effectively listen and regurgitate facts about government. That has demonstrated itself to us to be a problem, right? Beginning with No Child Left Behind, funding for civic education has declined in the United States every single year because we emphasize science and language. So when you start to see the decline in civic education time, it's because elementary schools cut civics and education prep time by up to 30% in order to put more time where they were being tested. So we've had that decline.

It is a direct cause of the world that we live in right now. And across the political spectrum, people will acknowledge that. So if we want to improve that, we need to have them being citizens more. Let me counter with this simple version of this response. Imagine if you wanted your kids to swim, but you didn't want to take them to the pool. Do you really want them to swim? We need to commit ourselves to what we know is right, and that's engaging them, having them participate in government, having them participate in simulations that truly teach them the nuances of how government works. And then, we'll have citizens who can survive and be successful.

Elana:

If I'm a district leader, a school leader, or a school board, how can they help with this? Because sometimes the teacher can have these ideas, but if they're being stifled a lot and they don't have that creativity or that space to do this, they won't do it after a while. So talking to those folks, how do you get them on board?

Shawn:

So excited you asked that question because this is one of the things that I need to get that message out more, right? This is kind of an unconventional answer, but the answer is schools teach best what everybody agrees to teach together. We have discussions about norms for the hallway, norms for the classroom. What are all teachers going to commit to doing together? And if we commit, as a school, to teaching something together, they are going to learn. I've seen schools turn on a dime when teachers and staff come together. So my suggestion for school administrators is this: stop leaving civic education to just social studies teachers. If that exists only in social studies, you're not really fully committed. What about the teacher who teaches cooking? One function of government is to establish uniform weights and measures. Every time you're talking about ounces, gallons, pounds and teaspoons, that's set by the United States government. And that's a function of government. And if we point that out, well then we're accomplishing something. They know how they interact with that.

Every time you're in a class, where you're making clothing in a high school fashion class, children's clothing has to be flame retardant. It can't have ties in it. That's law. That's how we interact with government. Everything that you possess has a tag. It says copyright. You can't make clothing with a Nike logo in that class. The same is true of your automotives classes. Why do we have a catalytic converter? There's a law that requires it. Why do you not use unleaded gas? There's a law that requires it. So we're constantly interacting with government. Another example is one school just talked about why do you have to stop at every train crossing every single time, stop and open the door with your buses? Because there's a law that makes you, every single day, stop.

The cereal you eat is enriched with vitamins and minerals that was created by public financing. And after the government did that, the average height of Americans increased by two to three inches over the course of the next 30 years. There are dramatic impacts in our lives. The PE class can talk about the President's fitness council. If every teacher is committed to teaching civic-minded skills and mindsets, then we're going to do better. So to sum up, have a very well-crafted, well-thought-out, organized plan so that the whole school is behind developing citizenship skills. And if you do that, if that all of those benefits are going to manifest literally. As a principal, if you put that into place, you'll increase the voter turnout in your community among parents, even people who don't have kids who go to the school. That's what the research shows happens when quality civic education is in place. And I think that puts us in a position to really serve our country.

Elana:

Yes. And I think if I had to ... "tweet" is not the word anymore. X it, whatever you call it, what you said, the summary is it's all about walking the talk and effectively integrating it into every subject because if you silo it ...

Shawn:

Yeah.

Elana:

alked about if you [inaudible: 00:23:37

Shawn:

The model there is when we taught writing, because of No Child Left Behind, we taught writing skills in science, math, and social studies, and we taught math skills in social studies, language arts, and science. And that uniform sharing of the responsibility makes it work and we know it.

Elana:

Yes. And as you talk, you were thinking about writing a book on project-based learning. I can't think of a better conduit to also build in civics really thoughtfully. Integrate a project-based learning unit and have driving questions around that.

Shawn:

That's exactly it. It's create a challenge and let them get their hands dirty doing the work of citizenship. And you're dead on. Project-based learning fits with what our research has shown very, very well.

Elana:

Yeah. It reminds me of what Angela Mayers has said over and over again is, "Listen to your students and listen to them on what truly breaks their heart, and then give them that avenue to shine," and I feel like that really is resonant to what you're talking about here.

Shawn:

I think when you work with students, you'll find that they often want to make sure that the things that have hurt them don't hurt others. And within a community and the suffering that they've gone through, that's a big deal. I mean, when it comes down to it, things like ramps for sidewalks, those are projects that someone picked up and said, "I need this. Are you willing to support me?" and students have been part of those projects forever and a day.

Elana:

Yes. Well, I know we can talk about this forever, and you have made it exciting and accessible and inclusive. And I hope people walk away going, "Wow, I didn't even know civics could be that way," and, "I don't even teach civics or social studies, but I have some ideas now on how to integrate it into my curricula." If you are an EdTech professional, I really hope you walk away with, "How is my product helping or hindering this movement? Does it effectively help aid in the integration of different subjects and technologies so kids can do this and create and show and advocate for themselves and their society?"

So in education, there's a lot of passion. You speaking, you have a lot of passion for this. You've been at it for a long time, but I also know that you're not go, go, go all the time. I'm not go, go, go. There are times when I just need, like you said, a little bit of introversion in yourself. So how do you have your own space to really recharge? What gets you to rejuvenate and tackle the day for the next day when you've had those "hitting your head against the wall" moments?

Shawn:

Well, I think as a teacher, before and now, we have to set rituals that force us to care for ourselves. When I work from home or when I'm traveling, your hours can pile up. You could be working 80 hours a week. And if I don't create a ritual, it gets hard. So when I was department chair, it was very stressful. There was a lot going on. I would, every single day, take out a post-it note and write what time the sunset happened, put it on my computer screen, and make sure that I left in time to be home. And I would sit on my deck, and we lived on a golf course, and I would wash the sunset. That thing forced me to stop and it made me make decisions about what I prioritized when I was working.

in the morning and work until: 10:00

Elana:

Great. Well, thank you again so much for your time. Gosh, goosebumps, lots of head-nodding. I am appreciative that you have decided to come into education and I hope your words inspire people that are listening, that might be a little burnt out, to stay because you can make an impact, and to attract people that we need so many more minds and people are leaving. So it warms my heart to hear people like you helping and being out there on social media and supporting others that are just starting their journey and elevating their voices too. So thank you very much. For those people listening, how can they best get ahold of you? You keep saying the Twitters and the things. Where are you hanging out?

Shawn:

Well, I used to just say my name. "I'm @ShawnMcCusker on Twitter, and you can find me and follow me," but the social media world is fragmented. So I'm @ShawnMcCusker on Twitter and Bluesky, and I'm @smc617 on Instagram and Threads. You can always reach out to me at shawn@edtechteacher.org and ask questions there. I have a blog, if you Google "Go Where You Grow." I'm a big believer that we have to pour energy into the things that make us grow and that's kind of the title of my blog. I put everything that I'm doing, projects that I'm writing, updates on travel there. Or you can go to edtechteacher.org and see the work that our organization is doing to work with schools. We pride ourselves on being at the leading edge of educational technology and pedagogy so if you're looking and that's a need, you can connect with me there.

Elana:

Awesome. And for those of you that are running on the go, listening to this audio, everything that Shawn talked about, plus more episodes that we talked about, any resources, we'll follow up with him if he thinks there are relevant resources to this conversation, we will put it in the show notes. And every episode gets a show note. This show note is located at Leoni Consulting Group. So two Gs, leoniconsultinggroup.com/56. So thank you all for joining All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode. If you'd like to dig a little deeper into the content of this episode or get to know Shawn or read his book, we'll put all of those links in the show notes. You can find Shawn on social media at Shawn, S-H-A-W-N, McCusker, M-C-C-U-S-K-E-R, on Twitter and all of the socials, and the show notes are leoniconsultinggroup.com, always on our website, leoniconsultinggroup.com/56, the number 56. So go there, listen to the audio, look at the transcript, get all of those resources. Reach out to Shawn. Take advantage of him being an awesome person that really just wants to help other educators and EdTech professionals. So we'll see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.