Community Policing in Today's Society STEM Integrated Project
Does the current police/community conflict concern you? Would you like your students to take a active role in improving police/community relations? If so, this is the project for you.
In this project, students will take a historical look at the practices affecting policing (immigration in early 1900s, civil rights movement in the 1960s, racial tensions of the 1990s, and current police/community conflict). They will analyze laws, policies, and procedures that affect the service that the community receives from police. Using this knowledge, students will propose a solution to help today’s police better serve the community. Students will present their proposal to team of industry experts "shark tank" style. The goal of the project is to give industry experts student feedback and ideas that can be implemented at the local level.
CTE: Providing a historical look at police/community conflict.
These lessons will provide students a historical perspective on a conflict that is often though of as being something "new." By analyzing historical conflict from multiple perspectives, students will learn how to be objective. Students will also be able to look inward when discovering sources of conflict. Lastly we ask student to become critical thinkers, change agents, and problem solvers, in proposing a solution to a long existing conflict.
ELA: Considering Context to Effectively Communicate
These lessons aim to provide students with a deeper understanding of the many facets of communication and ask that students analyze communicative situations in order to make stronger and more effective rhetorical choices. Students will be learning about rhetoric and rhetorical situations, and more specifically, they will be examining what it means to communicate as a law enforcement officer to a world that has mixed perceptions about what a law enforcement officer represents.
History:
These lessons will provide students with an insight into why the average immigrant in the early 1900s would choose to leave it all behind and travel to America. Students will then research what it would have been like to travel through an immigration checkpoint. Students will then compare the living conditions of immigrant workers in the early 1900s to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Students will culminate this project by using their comparison of the Progressive Era and the Civil rights movement to identify an issue of equality still present in American society today and drafting a letter to their congressmen suggesting a possible solution to their identified issue.
This project is brought to you by David Ray (CTE), Jared Barcelos (ELA), and Christopher Marquez (History), with support from the CTE Online curriculum leadership team and detailed coordination provided by the Course Team Lead Susan Morris.
