Citizenship was a large part of the hidden curriculum in my elementary schooling, and a part of the written curriculum during my high school education. For example, in my elementary school, we had citizenship awards for students, we did food drives, or in grade 8, we would lead play days or a school fair for the younger students. During high school, I took a class called Leadership 30L and the curriculum was based on being a leader and an active member of the community. The class had us volunteering, organizing food/blood/or charity drives. In elementary school, the citizenship that was focused on was The Personally Responsible Citizen, where we participated in community activities like food drives and have booths in the school fairs. In high school, the citizenship that was the focus personally was The Participatory Citizen. It was a class on leadership that allows this type of citizenship; in reality, this would probably not be the case if I had not taken this class. As a class, we were in charge of organizing events and leading events, instead of just partaking in events.
In high school, the curriculum made this type of citizenship possible. The article claims that “Proponents of this vision emphasize preparing students to engage in collective, community-based efforts” (4), which was the curriculum in our leadership class. The curriculum made it possible for the students to take this class to prepare, lead, and engage in collective efforts in our community. However, the curriculum does not align with all types of citizenship. A Justice Citizen is a thought-provoking subject and would need to be taught with freedom of thought available and analyze the problems facing the world around us (our community). However, the curriculum often does not look at the social, ethical, and prejudices problems our world faces, which makes exploring this type of citizen impossible. While teachers and professionals can aim their lessons in discussing issues facing our community, the curriculum makes it hard because it does not look at a wide range of perspectives.
Works Cited:
Westheimer, Joel, and Joseph Kahne. “What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy.” American Educational Research Journal 41.2 (2004): 237-269.
Steph's Blog 
I found it really interesting that your school offered a class in leadership that directed students towards being better citizens in the community. Even with the leadership class you still felt that certain worldly social issues were being left out which is a good observation since those would lead to more justice oriented students.
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I enjoyed reading your blog steph and really liked your ideas of how you had citizenship in your school. For example you mentioned that you were in a leadership group which I thought was cool and mentioned about doing food drives which is part of the personally responsible citizen which I agree because I did the same thing when I was in elementary school.
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I enjoyed reading your blog on citizenship. I liked how you mentioned that in elementary school that citizenship for you was personally responsible. For me I agree that it was too because I remember we did food drives , raked peoples leaves in the community etc. I also liked ho you mentioned you were in a leadership class, that must have been an interesting class to be part of and sounds like you enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing your ideas.
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I enjoyed reading your blog steph and really liked your ideas of how you had citizenship in your school. For example you mentioned that you were in a leadership group which I thought was cool and mentioned about doing food drives which is part of the personally responsible citizen which I agree because I did the same thing when I was in elementary school.
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I enjoyed reading your blog you have good ideas of what it means to be a personally responsible citizen such as having food drives etc . That is something I also did in elementary school
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