Before we started election project I had not a care in the world for politics. I had thought that it was none of my business, because it didn't pertain directly to me. I now realize how incorrect my previous thoughts were. This has shown me how important it is to be involved with the election, and how important is is to be well informed about the several candidates running for president. Unfortunately candidates don't always tell the truth, so our jobs as American citizens is to research for that truth ourselves. People might be uninformed about a certain candidate, and might align more with a candidate they had no information/incorrect information about. This is why we did this project. To help inform people of the dangers of being uneducated about your presidential candidates, or even local propositions. Teach them why it's important to vote, and have a say in the laws that will affect them. Teach them that they have a voice, and teach them how to speak it without over riding others. For more information on our project, check out the button below labeled "overview of our project". To find the website where you can find out which presidential candidate you most align with, check out the button below labeled, "I Side With",
The start of this entire project began with our letter in September. Joanne, our U.S. History teacher, started to ask us, "What is an issue in the world that you find negatively affecting our country the most at the moment. If there was one topic that you could bring attention to, what would it be, and why. We were given topics concerning current issues, Mostly having to do with social, economic, foreign policies, and any other topic we thought was worth mentioning. The button below will show my different drafts.
The classes were each assigned to their two presidential candidate. Our class consisted of candidates Donald Trump, and Jill Stein, and then were placed into sub groups of the main party, social, economic, and foreign policy. I was placed into Donald Trump's foreign policy, and had the topic of nuclear deals/sanctions. The groups researched their topics,and practiced debates in class before we had our project. We had to have a mock debate with all four presidential candidates in front of our school, and have the students vote for who they wanted for president off of our debates.
We started by checking out two of the presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. We watched a clip of the two debating against one another. We took the information Hilary said, and we fact-checked to see whether or not her claims were true. We researched fact-checking sites, and then we checked the opinions of experts on the subject to come to a conclusion on the matter. After that we got with our candidate groups, and start to research what our candidate had to say pertaining to our specific topic. Once we got all of the information, we had to fact check all of these. Is this possible? Are these statistics true? Do you mean what you say? We had to ask these questions, and more, while fact-checking.
Another part of our project was to create a truth campaign video, which consisted of statements that our candidate had said, and then the truth behind those words. We couldn't make the video until we had a plan, which is why we had to come up with a storyboard. The button below shows several of the pages that our video was based off of. You can find our video here. We also had to create an info-graphic to go along with the video that you can find below.
To me being an educator voter means that you took the time to research the candidates, and fact check the things they promise instead of just blindly following someone, because they say what you want to hear. The most challenging part of this project had to be getting into the mind set of your candidate. It's hard to have to stand behind things you don't believe in, and to preach those beliefs to others. That's why I''m glad we got to debate what our candidates say, and then show the truth to the people. This project has taught not only the importance of voting, but the importance of being an educated voter. It taught me to have interest in the presidential campaign, and not to blindly believe what I hear.
Forum and Debate:
The forum was very exciting. I love that we got to show case all of the work we have been doing for the past months, and inform people about the nominees. People seemed very interested in the truth behind the words of the presidential candidates. The debate was possibly the most nerve racking for me, but I still had a lot of fun. It was interesting to get to see all of the students debate. Especially since I hadn't seen most of the students from other classes the debate before. I feel that the debate helped strengthen my skills to speak in front of audiences, and help me when i have to speak in front of large groups later in my life.