 So welcome back to Senate Education. It is Tuesday, March 30th at 2.30 in the afternoon. And we will hear now from Mr. Demeray. Welcome to Senate Education. We hope you've been in house education quite a bit. I have. And I suspect they are applauding our good work that we have sent them. Absolutely, absolutely. They vote most of it out today, or will that happen tomorrow? Thank you so much. What I thought we would just have you here for, Jim, before we leave for the day is I just want to go back to civic education. We've heard a lot on civic education. We've had a lot of witnesses in. We've had different ideas. And I'm just wondering where the committee might be on this issue. And is there something that we might want to get drafted or not? To me, it's a big, big issue. I would like to do something meaningful. I don't want to just do something to do something. And I have a few ideas, but I, or one idea. But I, and it's kind of stolen from Senator Persilik. I don't know if you remember us mentioning it last week. But that's just where I'm at. I would love to know where everybody else is at. Senator Chitenden, you believe Green and Gold and civic education. Any thoughts? I'd love to hear what you were floating around with, Senator Persilik. I have the same concerns with the bill as presented as I did when we discussed it, months ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can go over the concerns if you want. Yeah, no, what Senator Persilik had mentioned last week, which I thought was really insightful, was we were here with literacy also. And what we worked on with literacy is training teachers and getting teachers the resources. And is there a way, again, to, and I'm not sure, is there a way to facilitate something to get us teachers, I think broadly, no matter what the subject area, whether it's science or math or languages, civic ed are there ways for us to just help give teachers the tools they need to be as effective as possible in the classroom in civic ed or literacy. There's specific things that teachers will learn that will get them to that point. There might be things related to civic ed as well and other things. And that's just a broad thought. I just thought it was very insightful for us, very interesting for us to be thinking about that. Again, is there a way to mirror those things? I agree, passing a class is not where I'm at. It's more giving people the tools to do the work. Senator Lyons. So I know that one of your suggestions was to have some of the students, the high school students actually work together to identify some of the practices that have helped them. And I think that is probably a piece of a, I think it's a great idea and I think it's an important part of it. But I also think, could, is there any money available? Okay, ready for this one? So the pandemic has highlighted the need for a democratic process. We've had some Department of Health oversight and guidance rule, rulemaking and direction that is slightly different from what we usually have in the democratic process. So we could link this to the pandemic. That's what I'm trying to do with that statement. And we could say that we could use some of the ARPA funds for a, have an RFP go out. And ask for many schools or many organizations related to schools to put in place opportunities to share best practices around civic education. And so, within that, you could have kids embedded in that process as much as possible. But I think, then it gets at the whole concept of teacher development, faculty development. So I'm thinking about how to use some of the money that might be available to us, could be ESER funds, I don't know. But to go broadly across the state, I know we had the one group of kids in and they were terrific. And the teacher there is just outstanding in what he's done with the kids. So that would be one school that might want to apply for a small grant to put on a webinar or to, I don't know what, but they'd have to create it. So just, that was one thought. I like, yeah, so just to clarify a little bit. So this would be, schools could get some dollars that would allow them to somebody like Matt Henshin and his students to put on some kind of webinar or podcast or something about how the work that they are doing so that other schools could benefit from that. And again, sort of take some of those ideas and implement them. Yeah, or it could be that they write up what they do or they have a video about what they do. I mean, it could be just any, it could be a broad range of creative opportunities for schools or it could be the NEA or it could be an institution of higher education. So I don't know how broadly we would cast the net, but just thinking that there might be a number of folks who would be interested in sharing their work. And then there would be a website where it could be, where these could be shared and teachers could go to these sites possibly. I just, again, thinking aloud where they might download, if they're teaching the Federalist Papers, they could download something that's there that other Vermonters are doing. Yep, could do that. Yeah, it could be in person. We don't know what's coming. Yeah. So, yeah. Senator Hooker and then Senator Purcell. I was really impressed certainly with those young people and with their teacher. But I also noticed that both Matt Henshin and Representative Moog commented on the need for content. And when I think of content, I love the idea of the activities and the action that these kids were involved in. And I think many schools have them. I know that here in Rotland, we've had teachers who have been very involved, but it's always a segment of the kids who gravitate toward those courses and those classes and those activities. And so thinking about the idea of the need for content, I'm thinking specifically the need for knowing what democracy is, knowing what the Constitution says, things like that. And I don't know how, and I'm struggling to figure out how we can incorporate those things for the broader student body, not just as kids who are naturally inclined to be involved in those things. So I'm hoping we can come up with some ideas because I think that nobody wants a class, you have to pass a class, but there's gotta be some way that we can do that. And with regard to teaching across the curriculum, I mean, we've been doing this for years in schools. You're teaching reading in every subject, you're teaching math in every subject. We did, I taught Treasure Island and at the same time the math teacher was teaching coordinates and the science teacher was teaching about wind directions and things like that. So I think there's a place for teaching civics across the curriculum, but you need kind of a core of information that differentiates or even compares democracy to other forms of government. Yeah, is that a person? Yeah, I like this conversation. And with regards to the bill, what I'm still having difficulty squaring is kind of what we're hearing from AOE of saying, well, all this is in there, teachers just have to do it. And I think that's what Senator Hooker was saying. If you have a great teacher and some interested students, you can have a really great program and you're meeting the performance based standards. So anybody could do it now. So, you know, I kind of agreed with what the students in Henshin was saying, it's like, well, we need a year of civics and a year of history, but I'm not sure that's really gonna change much. And that's kind of what I am hearing from AOE or what they sent us. And I'm like, that's all kind of in here. We just call it different things. So I'm not sure where to go on that, but I like the idea of figuring out some other ways of just supporting the schools that wanna do more in this as maybe a first step. Yeah. You know, I'm looking, I know Senator Hooker and Senator Lyons, both long time teachers. And Senator Lyons, I suspect teaching science, there are things that you could share with people that you've found to be particularly effective when teaching science. And I think Senator Hooker, you're having taught Treasure Island. I mean, there are certain things. I mean, right? I mean, it's kind of goes back to this literacy thing. Are there ways that we can help and support and give teachers the tools and get it and kind of make it almost, so I'm a little stuck on the Federalist Papers right now but if we could help teachers to understand, teach them a good way, not help them to understand, but an effective way to teach the Federalist Papers at any grade and that information could even be out there, but maybe part of this work is giving money to curate this information and make it more accessible. I'm not sure. Yes, Senator Hooker. I just want to mention that we're talking in terms of high school kids and what they're doing, but maybe this starts in grade school. This starts in preschool. I forgot the name of the organization that sent me a book that I could go and read to kids in elementary school about the young girl who goes to Washington. So it starts early. So maybe we need to have something that's in place all along and that way you've kind of build on the information that you have and by the time you get into junior high and high school, you're ready to do that active lobbying and... And we have already, I do believe even the literacy work we've done is a step toward better civic engagement. I mean, making certain that young people can read and write and communicate. That's really important. I do think though, and I guess I'll keep thinking about it and everyone can keep thinking about it. There is something that also does excite me about the idea of a bunch of young people getting together with maybe, I don't know if it'd be somebody from the agency, but asking and having a dialogue and not calling a summer study, call it whatever you want, but with a little money to get together on Zoom and really hammer out and ask each other the questions and come back to the legislature with the, hey, how do we get high school students engaged? How do we get students who are right out of college engaged? How do we keep that engagement? What are the things that you're all seeing out there that concern you, excite you? There is, we don't... These are the people that we're trying to engage more and they need to be at the table to help us. And I thought Mr. Henshin's students were great. And just doing more of that, I think, I for one would learn a lot in terms of direction. Go ahead, Senator Hooker. Governor's Institute. Yeah. They do it. So maybe we could send a bunch of kids to Governor's Institute and have them talk about this specific topic. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, there's already a structure there. And this may have even been mentioned by one of you when we were having this conversation. Is there a Governor's Institute on civic ed? And again, like you said, we don't want it to be just the, those students that are always going to go for it because they're just really interested. They've got the commitment. They've got the time, but what about those students for whom it isn't their instinct to go in that direction or might need a little more encouragement? So you get those students who might be more reserved or whatever or don't have the resources to do it, to jump into these kinds of things. So Governor's Institute is an interesting idea. Okay, so I think we'll just keep, give it some more thought. We can come back to it. I'll give it some additional thought. And maybe Jim, you can stay on the line after this and you and I can maybe hammer out something, some kind of draft idea and we'll just kind of keep it going. Okay, any questions going forward? Kind of a busy week, taking on house bills, et cetera. Okay, great. Thanks everybody. Thanks for a good afternoon, interesting conversation and look forward to seeing everybody tomorrow. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Thanks so much.