I asked a student to get on my computer and google Representative Nancy Todd, their representative in the Colorado State Assembly. I taught with Nancy before she retired and knew she would be a good sport and would be friendly to the kids. I did not tell my students what I knew about her. I should have. That is the key: government officials are everyday people with jobs. I guess I did not really believe that until I became involved in local politics myself.

Nancy’s voice mail picked up, and the student hung up. I said, “Invite her to breakfast. I looked at my desk calendar: “April 8th. Call her back. “ Maria left a voice mail, giving Representative Todd the details.

“Who else should we invite?” I asked.

Students: “The President.” “We don’t want him.” “How about John Kerry?”

“We can invite them all—just start calling.”

In spare moments over the next few weeks, the kids googled officials and invited them to breakfast. Many asked for a written invitation, and a group of kids worked on many drafts to make the invitation just right.

The government officials started to call back. Almost all were coming to our school to meet with the kids. Tyler showed me how to use the speaker on my cell phone so we could play back the messages the representatives had left. The students listened carefully, sometimes smiling when they heard the positive response to our invitation. Soon the reaction was…”Dang, what are we going to feed all of these people?” “We better make this nice. Can we serve bacon and use tablecloths?”

Now the Hard Part: Preparation

Their State Senator, their State Representative, a representative from both of their United States Senator’s offices, four members of their city council, and all five of their school board members agreed to come.

Now the hard part: I had to prepare them and help them feel confident about speaking with their government officials. I had all spring break to worry about that. I had to think about myself as a citizen. What would I need to do to prepare for this breakfast? You have to know about the issues, your sources of information, what questions to ask.

I gathered recent articles about the work of our guests and created a graphic organizer for students to use to hold their thinking. In Ron Ritchhart book’s Intellectual Character, he talks about thinking routines being most helpful if they work outside of class in science, math, social studies, and in life. I tried to keep that in mind as I created the graphic organizer.

Many of the articles had to come from the Aurora city paper that is distributed free in local grocery stores. We did not have much time, but each student only had to familiarize him/herself with the work of one official. Once the students had completed research, they had to write questions with the people sitting at their table and decide who would be asking which questions.

We studied, we talked about manners, we decorated the tables, we dressed up, we wrote introductory speeches, and we chose table roles. Two days ahead, I had my students sit at tables in my room with all of the people from their group. They practiced introductions and questions and had a visual plan for how the morning might go. I was glad for my last-minute thought about having breakfast served family style so we did not have to wait for 130 people to go through a buffet line.

Success!

Each table chose a table host that met their guest in the front of the building. Once the guests arrived, four students gave an introductory speech about the purpose of the breakfast and about life at Prairie. Chenice said that “the purpose of the breakfast is to help us find our voice. We want to have practice talking to our representatives in government.”

Once the table servers served the quiche that we ordered from district food service, the table hosts gave a brief introduction of their guest. Unexpectedly, each guest gave a few comments, but they kept them brief and were so complimentary of my students. In the end, I was glad that each representative had a few minutes to talk. Once the introductions were over, my students had one-on-one conversations at their tables and had the opportunity to ask the questions they had prepared.

The breakfast was great. I walked around and listened to kids and their representatives discuss driving laws, guaranteed viable curriculum, and police review boards. The representatives were kind, complimentary, and truly interested in my students.

Student Voices

April 5, Academic Journal Question: Is it easy to have a conversation with a government representative?

“No. It is not easy to have a conversation with a government representative because you may not know what to say or what type of questions are appropriate or not. Also you may know know what type of words or speech to use while speaking with a representative.” Obrayshia “a little bit because he might ask you a question and you probley might not know then that leves the conversation no where.” Ray

April 8th, Academic Journal Question: Is it easy to have a conversation with a government representative?

“Personally, I do think it is easy to talk to a representative because they are regular people with big jobs. What I really wanted to know is how much they get paid weekly. The breakfast went really well. Everybody was really respectful and did their introductions and speeches really well by speaking loudly and clearly. I think that today was a good opportunity for us to be able to ask questions and to tell them what we think should happen around our school.” Obrayshia “I think it was easy because we had stuff to talk about and she made it feel like I was talking to my friends that how comfortable it was to talk to her she answers all of our questions and spoke clearly. I had fun because I had never talked to a representative.” Ray “From my point of view, I think it was very easy for some people to talk to the representatives. Well, I thought it was very fun because you could learn about them and what they do. I think the breakfast was organized and a very good thing to do. I am so thankful that those representatives came to us at Prairie. I think it was easy to speak to the representatives because you could ask them questions. I would have been hard if we had not been prepared what to say and what kind of question to ask.” Melissa “It was easy to talk to the Rep because she was laid back. We had good questions and she had really good explanations. Everything went by smoothly. We asked about the (police) review board, and the Brent Brents case. Reading some of the articles helped a lot with the breakfast. She gave us things about the drought and police in the area. I really liked Richard Poole also.“ Brittany