What Is Education For? A Response to What Kind of Citizens Do Educators Hope Their Students Become? A Response to \u27Storypath: A Powerful Tool for Engaging Children in Civic Learning.\u27

Darwich (2020) asked “What Kind of Citizens Do Educators Hope Their Students Become?” in her response to “Storypath: A Powerful Tool for Engaging Children in Civic Education” (McGuire et al., 2019). She argued that civics should be rooted in social justice grounded by critical civic empathy, which requires focusing on power and privilege given persistent disparities in caring for all people within our democracy. We agree and here further emphasize the importance of dismantling systems of oppression that block efforts to advance this goal. We also recognize pragmatic complexities in elementary school classrooms that require teacher professional judgment to create conditions for success. These include attending to diverse developmental needs of learners, classroom time constraints, and instructional standards that do not explicitly focus on social justice. We describe how the teacher in McGuire et al. navigated these challenges and call for systemic change to support teachers in routinely engaging all children in experiential civic learning grounded by critical civic empathy

Storypath: A Powerful Tool for Engaging Children in Civic Education

This article explains why elementary school children need civic education, identifies common obstacles that frustrate efforts, then describes how the Storypath approach can provide all students with opportunities for powerful civic learning. An actual application in a culturally diverse fourth-grade classroom illustrates how children grappled with Seattle’s affordable housing issue as they created and enacted Storypath’s five components, namely setting, characters, context, critical incidents, and concluding event. It also demonstrates how Storypath effectively integrates social studies content, literacy skills, and social-emotional learning (SEL) through cooperative small-group episodes that produce meaningful and memorable lived experiences for students engaged in civic discourse and democratic decision-making. The article concludes by listing and explaining how Storypath nurtures multiple positive outcomes. These include (a) providing a feasible framework for organizing complex curricula; (b) stimulating imagination, motivation, investment, and commitment to learning; (c) engaging rigorous discussion for cognitive growth; (d) embodying authentic teaching and learning; (e) grounding effective cooperative learning; (f) supporting successful curriculum integration; (g) promoting accomplishment of national and state standards; (h) enabling individual differentiation for success; (i) developing civic capacity; (j) cultivating transfer of learning within and outside of classrooms; and (k) furthering the civic mission of schools