Molding and modeling of active citizenship through leadership in <i>The Walk</i>

Purpose This lesson using The Walk by Winsome Bingham is intended to aid elementary students in cultivating citizenship mentors who model social change in their own areas. Students use the text to bridge the gap in seeing themselves as active citizens now as students and being molded into adult citizens. They can realize in both phases, they can impact their local communities. Students work together throughout the lesson to recognize fellow citizens and their contributions to their world through the active demonstrations of specific democratic ideals. While students engage in asking and answering questions posed to them and by them, they collaboratively explore individual leadership and activism and identify core civic ideals demonstrated in action by specific leader mentors. Design/methodology/approach Students construct their own knowledge regarding citizenship and the active demonstration of democratic ideals as they think critically, engage with classmates and community members, and demonstrate cross-curricular and social studies content knowledge and skills. The text serves as a catalyst to bridge students' ideas of activism in one area, like voting, to other examples historically and contemporarily of local leadership resulting in change. Findings Students engage in this lesson actively as they learn through connections to text, historical people and events, and current examples of community leadership. Students contemplate and discuss ideas like duties of citizenship and citizen leadership, as well as identify leader mentors they might learn from in their local area. Students expand ideas of community activism as they seek tangible examples in their contemporary world. They explore texts, make connections and create digital and audio accounts of first-hand accounts of individual activism. Originality/value In this lesson, elementary students are allowed the choice and the freedom to grapple with big ideas of what it means to be an active citizen, how to identify appropriate leader-mentors to watch and emulate, and how their own demonstration of leadership now and in the future serves as examples to other citizens and can create lasting change by leading through example. They will work together within and outside the classroom to note where opportunities for engagement in community and with others can occur. Students can begin to see themselves in current roles of active citizenship as they interview community leaders about their journeys from student-citizens to adult citizens active in demonstrating democratic ideals.