Translating Student Voice into Student Action: How to Foster Civics in Your Classroom with the Students Taking Action Together Strategies

A primary mission of education is to prepare students for informed and active citizenship. But how, exactly, do teachers pursue this—especially given other pressing priorities, like ensuring academic proficiency and addressing social-emotional learning? Students Taking Action Together (STAT), a research project developed at Rutgers University, provides an answer: five research-based instructional strategies teachers can use to help students rehearse and develop civic impulses and dispositions.

STAT strategies complement existing social studies, English language arts, and history curricula in the upper-elementary, middle, and high school levels, and they are aligned with SEL competencies and active civic practices. Incorporating these strategies into lessons is a way to meet students’ natural desire to be heard with skill-building that empowers them to

Create whole-class norms for civil conversations, even when topics are controversial and emotions run high.
Express opinions on real-world issues and entertain divergent and diverse points of view.
Engage in respectful debate aimed at understanding complex issues rather than winning an argument.
Examine historic, school-based, and current social problems from many sides, considering potential solutions, drawing up action plans, and evaluating those plans’ likely effectiveness by comparing them with past solutions.
Tailor presentations to the needs and interests of different and specific audiences.
This webinar will provide an overview of the five STAT strategies, share examples of how to incorporate them in daily practice, and offer educators and school leaders advice for launching STAT in their district or educational setting.

About the Presenters
Lauren Fullmer is the math curriculum chair and a middle school math teacher at the Willow School in Gladstone, New Jersey; an instructor for the Academy for Social-Emotional Learning in Schools (a partnership between Rutgers University and St. Elizabeth University); an adjunct professor at the University of Dayton’s doctoral program, and an educational field consultant for the Rutgers Social-Emotional Character Development (SECD) Lab.

Laura Bond is an interim elementary assistant principal for the Robbinsville Township School District. She has served as a K–8 curriculum supervisor, a secondary assistant principal, and a secondary social studies teacher. She works as an educational field consultant for the Rutgers Social-Emotional Character Development (SECD) Lab.