Teacher brings lesson to life
Published: September 17, 2005
Sixth-grade teacher Laura Caudill dressed the part Friday to teach her students about the U.S. Constitution.
Wearing a patriot’s costume, white wig and tri-corner hat and sitting astride a quarter horse named Ginger, the teacher at Waverly Elementary School in the Mooresville Consolidated Schools district became “Constitution Caudill” for about 20 minutes.
“It was super cheesy, but telling them about the details doesn’t always sink in. I thought it would catch their attention,” she said.
The Constitution is the focus in classrooms and college lecture halls statewide in observance of Constitution Day, which is officially today.
A new law requires all schools and colleges that receive federal money to teach about the Constitution every Sept. 17, the anniversary of its signing. The document was signed Sept. 17, 1787. Federal employees are supposed to have a Constitution observance, too.
Because the anniversary falls on a Saturday this year, schools could observe it the week before or after. Most schools chose the week before because mandatory Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress-Plus testing begins Monday.
A sampling of area efforts:
North Central High School: All social studies teachers incorporated the Constitution into lessons Thursday and Friday, with instruction ranging from Constitutional scavenger hunts, where students were given a clue and had to find the answer by reading the document, to debates about relevant U.S. Supreme Court cases.
Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis: Earlier this week, the college hosted two events involving professors who debated the anti-gay marriage amendment to the Indiana Constitution, and whether individual rights and freedoms need to be restricted to ensure homeland security.
And there was Caudill.
She clutched a copy of the Bill of Rights in one hand and held a colonial flag in the other as she talked up the Constitution. Then Ginger exercised her own rights: She relieved herself in front of Waverly’s fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders, drawing a loud chorus of “Eyeews.”
“She had been really, really good and held it all day. But she got a little bit on the nervous side,” Caudill said.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: