In a time when polarization is taking over American democracy, WEGO government students took steps to reverse this trend by participating in Full Session simulation on Thursday, April 17.
As part of the Full Session, current government students at WEGO continued the tradition of carrying out a simulation to deep dive into the democratic process and understand how important it is for teenagers to learn the legislative process before they are eligible to vote and weigh in on the bills that will shape the lives they are about to live.
“We have elected student leadership that we believe reflects the same type of leadership that exists in our U.S. Congress, and we allow those students to make a lot of the decisions in the legislative process that we’re simulating,” humanities teacher Brigid Clark said.
Rather than learning from lectures, the government classes at West Chicago Community High School allow students to play the parts of lawmakers: proposing their beliefs through bills they have written and presenting them to committees in the hopes of gaining support to pass their bill. The government staff try to keep this simulation as close to a genuine Congressional experience as possible, using parliamentary procedure to help students learn to keep debate civil while also stepping back and letting elected student leaders take the reins.
“I was a little nervous at first,” senior Lauren Ludovice said. “The whole speeches thing was kind of stressful. It did force me to write a good speech, though – otherwise I would have just been saying a bad speech in front of the entire auditorium.”
“I was very nervous just to hear we were going to talk in front of almost half the senior class,” senior Tessa Banasziak said. “If anything, my speech would have been like two sentences, if not.”
Ludovice also explained her thought process when it came to voting on the bills.
“Some bills definitely had good ideas,” Ludovice said. “But then in committees, they just weren’t written the best, or they didn’t seem like they would be very effective in what they were trying to do. I feel like that’s kind of what makes me vote yes or no – if it’s going to be an actually effective bill.”
The benefits of students learning these skills and developing these qualities before they leave high school may lead to stronger voter engagement in the coming years. They are learning how to vote using their genuine beliefs, and because of this hands-on experience, they are more likely to continue voting and stay involved in the world they are growing into as adults.
“Americans’ participation in civic life is essential to sustaining our democratic form of government. Without it, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people will not last,” Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institute said.
