On Thursday, Tom Torlakson, state superintendent of public instruction, announced that 74 schools throughout California were recipients of Civic Learning Awards, which honor public schools’ efforts to engage students in civic learning. Sitting among this crop with a merit award is Benicia High School.

Benicia High promotes civic engagement in a variety of ways, including through having a voter registration link on the school website, student clubs like Junior Statesmen of America and even courses like speech and debate, which teach students how to deliberate on civic topics. According to department chair Edward Coyne, much of the civic engagement comes from the social science curriculum itself.

“As a department, we stress civic duty to our students,” he said. “That’s the first thing we stress: you need to question everything from authority and past history, and then we use our curriculum as examples of it.”

Coyne says a lot of the credit goes to the social science teachers, who have their own creative ways of relating civics lessons to students.

“As a department, we’re really lucky to have the teachers we do,” he said. “They convey the importance of being a citizen first and then use the curriculum to demonstrate it.”

The curriculum begins in ninth grade where they learn about civics through world geography. It continues in 10th and 11th grade, where students learn about historically successful civic engagement and the consequences of not participating in civic duty. The lessons are then fully fleshed out for students taking U.S. government and U.S. economics as seniors. Coyne said the importance of civic duty is the primary focus throughout all social science courses.

“We use our history curriculum to demonstrate when people participated and what happened, and when people didn’t participate and what happened,” he said.

For government and economics teacher Kent Higginbotham, awareness and involvement are among the key components of teaching civics. He takes students through the voter registration process and has frequently booked the League of Women Voters Benicia to deliver presentations on the importance of participating in a democratic society.

“It is an excellent presentation that demonstrates why it is important for young people to get registered, stay registered and vote,” he said. “For example, the 18 to 25 age bracket has the lowest voter turnout among age groups. The presentation touches on the reasons behind this and how it impacts the political power of young adults collectively.”

Additionally, Higginbotham has gotten a variety of guest speakers for his classes, including former councilmember Bill Whitney and various Benicia High graduates including Solano County criminal defense attorney Thomas Maas to discuss the criminal justice system, financial planner Bob Morgan to talk about economics and 1987 graduate Pete Turner to discuss his experiences being in the military.

Higginbotham also utilizes a lesson plan called “ A Plan of Action.” As part of the lesson, students identify a local, state, national or global issue they feel passionate about.

“They provide a list of reasons as to why the issue is important to them,” he said, “then they must provide a plan of the numerous ways in which they could put a political spotlight on the issue.”

These include anything from starting a petition to writing a congressional representative to attending a City Council meeting.

“We want a BHS graduate knowing the importance of civic involvement and how the many ways they can get involved,” Higginbotham said. “We want them to have an understanding of the philosophy and workings of our government—both the good and bad. We want them to know that they have a voice and that they can have a positive impact on the future of our city, state, nation and the world.”

One of the civics-related programs offered at BHS is American Studies. The junior-level curriculum consists of a cohort of students in Coyne’s Advanced Placement U.S. History class and Kim Thompson’s AP Language and Composition class where lessons from both are intertwined. Coyne said the idea for the class came from Thompson when she noticed that a lot of what she was teaching in AP Lang— namely demonstrating knowledge and analysis— coincided with what Coyne was teaching in AP U.S. History. Coyne’s class featured lessons on analyzing historical documents and writing thesis statements, and Thompson figured she could reinforce those lessons in her class, which goes over American literature.

“The next summer, she and I sat down and said let’s actually make a cross-curricular syllabus that would incorporate everything I’m doing in AP U.S. History and everything she’s doing in AP Lang,” Coyne said.

The class started off very small, but Coyne said most university-bound students are taking the program. They’ve even started attending City Council and school board meetings as well as city meetings in Vallejo to speak their minds.

“They know that when you take AP American Studies, you will know how to write analytically, you’ll know how to verbally defend your thesis, you’ll know how to recognize everything that’s in the Constitution to Supreme Court cases to social, political and economic issues that are occurring in a specific time period and be able to reflect on those,” he said.

Coyne said the most important civic lesson is giving students background knowledge to participate in the democratic process.

“They have to understand what their views are, be able to communicate to other people in a respectful manner, listen to other people’s views and implement that in city governments, county governments, state governments and federal governments,” he said. “In doing so, they will be better citizens, which is the whole purpose of our educational system.”

In a statement, Benicia High Principal Brianna Kleinschmidt expressed gratitude for the work by staff that led to the recognition.

“I am proud of all of the work of our staff and students and proud to offer a great education to our BHS students,” she said. “We continue to work to update our curriculum so that students receive interesting, relevant, and applicable instruction that will help them to become better citizens and better contributors to our world.”