Megan Briere

I used Linda Christensen’s Stealing Home lesson and my students LOVED IT! Many connected to this lesson on a personal level. It is a huge piece of getting them to understand the human side to complicated (and boring) government issues.

Housing discrimination and other forms of systemic racism/classism are all themes I touch upon many times throughout the year, but particularly in looking at Civil Rights Supreme Court cases… I work through with students some of the options of the federal government and ask the big question “in what situations should our federal government use its rank over state governments?”

Megan Briere’s class in Las Vegas, NV

Once students better understand these topics through more personal narratives like Christensen’s, it is something they are passionate about post-lesson and they love discussing how these issues still exist today and how we might go about changing them (whether that’s at the federal level or not).

Students gain so much by being able to make personal and lifelong connections to issues involving our government.