Clarification: This story has been updated to better reflect the nature of former President Donald Trump’s McDonald’s campaign visit.
Every afternoon this fall, a tight-knit group of six students and two teachers have met to discuss the presidential election at the high school in Bar Harbor, Maine. Despite the contentious nature of the election, in this classroom, nothing—including abortion rights, gun control, and immigration policies—is off the table.
The group of six have spent the semester researching, dissecting, and formulating their own stances on these issues. They’ve also learned about some of the complex machinery at work behind the scenes of electing a president, including how the Electoral College works and why parties caucus.
It’s all part of a pilot course called Election Year, an elective conceptualized, created, and implemented by a handful of teachers at Mount Desert Island High School. The course, which began in August and will end three days before Election Day, aims to inform students about how voting and elections work.
But Election Year isn’t just about an information transfer; it’s designed more as a crash course in critical thinking and civil political discourse. For students who’ve taken the course, Election Year is a urgent, hands-on version of their social studies class.
“We focus more on current events, and how those impact the election. This [course] is a lot more digestible than just learning about the history of stuff,” said Isa Raven, a 17-year-old senior who’s taking Election Year in conjunction with her Advanced Placement Government and Politics class.
Students who enrolled in the course have been highly engaged, Principal Matt Haney said. It’s also been a way for the school to connect real-world events to civics education.
Election Year has helped students learn about concepts they’d only heard in passing before, like gerrymandering. It’s also helped break down complex topics like Medicaid and Social Security. But Election Year’s core focus is the information and media storm that a presidential election whips up. Every lesson begins with 10 minutes of CNN 10, a daily news show.
“Fact finding is easy, but I want to know what students think about [these facts]. If they come up with a claim about something, I want them to explain their reasoning. I hope I’m teaching them a responsible way to research things,” said Elana Diaz, a social studies teacher who was tapped by her department to create and run this course last year.
For some students taking the elective, like 18-year-old Lawson Waldrop, learning about the election is more than just a theoretical exercise.
“I am going to vote this year,” Lawson said. “It’s been good to have a place where I can ask my questions. I just know a lot more about how to research candidates now.”
Politics make it a difficult time to create an election-focused curriculum
Diaz spent a lot of time researching how to teach this discussion-based course, reviewing different curricula and asking her colleagues what lessons to include. But she’s quick to admit that at first, she wasn’t “very excited” at the prospect of spending nine weeks on the election because of the divisive and fraught tone of the political discourse.
Her fears aren’t unfounded. This election, like the last two, has been tumultuous, dividing the country sharply on issues like race, gender, and the legitimacy of the electoral process. Teachers have repeatedly come under fire for bringing so-called “divisive topics” into the classroom, so much so that surveys have found principals discourage teachers from straying too far outside the curriculum.
Those concerns have bled into teachers’ discussion of the elections. In a nationally representative survey conducted in August by the EdWeek Research Center, 30 percent of principals said the idea that civics is too political or controversial is a “challenging” or “very challenging” barrier to teaching the subject. Republican lawmakers in 18 states have passed laws that restrict discussions on “divisive topics” in classrooms. The national discourse has become so tense that some students say they shy away from discussing the election with their peers or teachers.
In Maine, though, Republicans failed to pass two bills—in 2021 and 2023—that would have restricted public school teachers from engaging with topics deemed sensitive. Unfettered by any overriding mandate, Election Year has been a happy surprise for Diaz.
“The two political parties haven’t found any common ground about democracy. But this class has, in a way that’s surprising,” she said. “We can celebrate each other despite our differences. The class gives me hope.”
Evaluating news for credibility and context
This fall, Election Year has circled through several essential topics with the students—from the history of voter rights to how presidential campaigns use the media to impart their message. Students have also worked on mini research projects called “Stake Your Claim,” in which they pick a topic, research it extensively, and come up with a stance they need to be able to defend.
One student claimed that the popular vote was a better way to decide the election than the Electoral College. Others picked research topics on health care and abortion policies.
As a key assignment, students had to scrutinize the Sept. 10 debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
“We had to track what actual evidence they gave on different policies. But it wasn’t about policies at all,” Isa said. “There are some crazy statistics on how much airtime was spent on insulting each other.”
The class watched older debates from other elections to compare the tone and substance. Later, they compared the Trump and Harris debate to the vice presidential one, agreeing that candidates Sen. JD Vance and Gov. Tim Walz answered policy questions with evidence.
“We realized, woah, that’s how it’s supposed to work,” Isa added.
The two political parties haven’t found any common ground about democracy. But this class has, in a way that’s surprising.
The focus on current events is tied into another major goal of the course—learning how to evaluate information accurately and understand the context in which it was generated. Diaz encourages students not to cherry-pick their facts from just one news source.
“We discuss information-gathering and how given the same set of facts, people, or news media can interpret those differently based on their unique perspectives,” said Diaz.
This discernment is critical for students, especially with the prevalence of dis- and misinformation. And just like adults, teenagers have become more prone to believe conspiracy theories they come across online.
Inside a class discussion on campaign strategy
In one Election Year class last week, which Education Week observed through Zoom, students huddled around a table to discuss Trump’s recent campaign stop at a McDonald’s in suburban Pennsylvania where the former president learned how to use a fryer and served customers at the drive-in window. Megan Leddy, the teaching assistant, prodded the discussion with a few open-ended questions.
“Why do you think Trump did that?” The students took a minute to reflect. “Was it a jab at Kamala Harris?” Leddy added.
Isa was the first to jump in. “He’s cosplaying at being the working class,” she said. “It’s because he wants to be relatable.”
Other students chimed in, too, theorizing that Trump’s “publicity stunt” and assertion that Harris never had a job at McDonald’s like she claimed, might end up being reported without scrutiny or fact-checking.
Leddy urged them to examine how this news was reported across a series of media outlets, from CNN to Fox News to local newspapers. “If I’m viewing this story on a conservative news outlet, what version would I get?” she asked.
“That Trump wants to know our experience as the working class?” ventured Isa.
Leddy capped the discussion by reminding students that their own views also play a role in what they get out of a news story: “You’re going to bring in your personal experience,” she said.
“We’re always interested in the why behind a news story,” Leddy told Education Week after the class.
It’s important for young people to understand the information ecosystem they live in, said Eric Soto-Shed, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and co-lead of The Civics Thinking Project, an initiative to bring more research-backed civics curriculum and assessments into the classroom.
“It is just a fundamentally different landscape in terms of the information we’re exposed to. We know from research that you get more of a polarized view of the world when you’re in your social media bubbles,” Soto-Shed said.
The most powerful thing that educators can do for their students is build their capacity to break through these informational silos, he said.
“Students should be asking themselves: Why am I seeing this? How often do I look at different perspectives? What about sensational news attracts me as a viewer?,” said Soto-Shed.
Classrooms as laboratories of civil discourse
For Diaz, navigating the information ecosystem is a pathway to another key goal of the course—learning how to have a civil discourse.
Admittedly, this group of students haven’t clashed too much over topical debates, say Isa and Lawson. Even when contentious issues like race, gender, and religion do come up, the group falls back on their research skills.
“We talked about abortion the other day and some of the kids just had clarifying questions. We Googled it. It wasn’t contentious,” Isa said.
Diaz said she’s been intentional about using discussions, and not debates, as a framework. A background in using restorative practices helps her, too. When a presidential candidate makes a controversial statement about a specific community, Diaz encourages students to look who is affected, and how.
“I’m not leading them. They make their own estimations. But I do hope they pick up on how to be empathetic [through this process],” she said.
The timing of the course also coincides with cooling political tempers, said Haney, which may have given Election Year some breathing room to develop. The school community isn’t as starkly divided as it was during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
“In the last year, I feel a change where people are starting to listen to each other and assume the best intentions,” Haney said. “I feel a tide turning, and I’m really happy about that.”
As Election Year comes to close, Haney and Diaz are thinking about what next year’s course might look like without a presidential election. Diaz is interested in doing a “current events” class that looks at local ballot initiatives and Senate races. In this iteration, she’d like to do some things differently, like giving students an opportunity to share their findings with the rest of the school.
“I’d like to also get into our community more to showcase the course, and physically build momentum for democracy,” she said.
