High School Leaders Program: Curriculum

Informed, Thoughtful, and Active Citizens

The curriculum for the Sorensen Institute's High School Leaders Program is focused on three primary learning modules:

The Informed Citizen: Virginia Government and Politics
Too often the structure and function of state and local government is not adequately covered in most schools, leaving young people ill-informed about how the governments closest to them actually function. The Informed Citizen component of the High School Leaders Program explores the core functions of state and local governments in Virginia and the larger policy issues with which they are faced. Students spend half of their classroom time becoming more informed citizens, focusing on the structures and processes of Virginia's state and local governments. In addition to lectures by faculty and guest speakers, students complete in-class exercises and use a reading packet assembled from core textbooks on Virginia government, news sources, and government documents.

The Thoughtful Citizen: Virginia Public Policy
The Thoughtful Citizen builds on the first part of the HSLP curriculum by guiding students through an in-depth study of the major public policy issues now before Virginia's state and local governments. Students will learn exactly how, in response to these policy challenges, legislation is developed, written, advocated, and debated. Classroom time in this module focuses on student discussion, simulations, and debates that help students come to a deeper appreciation for what governments actually do each day. Students will prepare for and participate in a Mock General Assembly.

The Active Citizen: The Tools of Modern Advocacy
The Active Citizen module of the program will give students the real-world tools they will need to become effective advocates whether in government or business. Unlike previous aspects of the curriculum, this section is not taught in the traditional sense with readings and classroom instruction. Rather, students hear from and talk with a variety of experts in addition to completing workshops on practical skills that they can use to effect change in Virginia. This may include such activities as the following: learning how to do a radio interview, hosting a press conference, writing an op-ed, lobbying a member of the General Assembly, working as a Legislative Assistant, and learning grassroots campaign techniques. Students will be asked to put all these skills to work in the Culminating Project at the end of the program.

The Culminating Project

Students work in groups on a Culminating Project in the final week of the program. The projects are designed to integrate the knowledge students have gained as Informed and Thoughtful citizens with the skills they have learned to become Active citizens. Each group develops concrete policy proposals to address specific public policy challenges . The student groups research and write full reports with detailed recommendations as to how Virginia government should positively respond to the issue. Students will prepare supporting materials and build a case for their conclusions.

Each group will then be asked to present their policy proposals to an experienced group of government and business leaders. They will answer questions and receive feedback on their ideas at the end of the program. Past groups in the HSLP program have written policy proposals on a variety of issues including school uniforms, tuition caps on higher education, graduation rates at public universities, hazing laws, urban redevelopment and DNA dragnet laws. In some cases, these policy proposals—developed by students in our College Leaders Program—have so impressed legislators that the ideas have been codified as legislation and have actually been introduced in the Virginia General Assembly.

Speakers

An integral component of the High School Leaders Program is the many opportunities our students have to meet and talk with current and former leaders in Virginia. This includes a broad range of elected officials, business and nonprofit leaders, academics, lobbyists and government employees.

Past programs have included Virginia Governors Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, George Allen, Gerald Baliles and Linwood Holton, U.S. Senators George Allen and Chuck Robb, many members of the Virginia Congressional Delegation in Washington, dozens of members of the Virginia General Assembly, numerous locally elected officials, leaders of the state's top businesses, political scientists, key lobbyists, and those who work in public policy at all levels of government.