Civics

This is my seventh year in the classroom, and I think I mostly have a handle on what my students are likely to find difficult. But I have been grading a batch of assignments this evening that has taken me by surprise. 

It's a reboot of an assignment from the spring, in which students had to contact an elected official about a public policy question that would affect individuals with disabilities. The instructions say that they have a lot of latitude about what they do, but it has to make sense. Don't ask your US senator to take action on a state bill, or vice versa. Don't ask your legislator to vote on a bill that has already met its fate. There are a bunch of specific options: if you are interested in issue X, you may wish to contact your US senator about bill Y.

They had more than two months to do this assignment, and I let them resubmit if I spotted any problems with their work. I did this up until a week before the final due date. But you guys, there are a TON of submissions from those last seven days, and a surprising number of them disregarded the "must make sense" warning. What is the mayor of a Midwestern municipality going to do about a piece of pending federal legislation? Maybe he will call his U.S. senator on behalf of the confused student.

Wish me luck, my friends.