Constitution Day | Bill of Rights Day Teacher Contest Winners 2019

0:04 hello and welcome to the Bill of Rights Institute I’m Bill of Rights day what an exciting celebration we’re ready to have with me as always is our director of outreach you may know where this is Rachael Davis and Humphreys hmm and with me is my dear colleague Gary Coletti senior manager of teacher and programs

0:26 yes and hello out there across the country celebrating bill of rights day now of course today itself is not Bill of Rights day as we all know Bill of Rights Day is December 15th which is a Sunday and figuring this year this year but figuring people would possibly not be tuning and on a Sunday we decided to release it today so you yourself can

0:46 celebrate your own Bill of Rights Day on the day that you choose why is it December 15th or Rachel Davis that is a really good question so December 15th is the day that all ten of the amendments the Constitution ratified that’s wonderful so it became those ten amendments obviously became known as the Bill of Rights and today is an anniversary of the occasion of their ratification that is a reason to

1:07 celebrate there’s so many reasons to celebrate the Bill of Rights not only because of what they afford us in terms of our freedoms and our rights but also that it’s a moment of real coming together the American people to to agree on a set of principles by which we should be governed absolutely and as you can tell we here at the Bill of Rights Institute take this day very seriously

1:28 we love celebrating it but today’s a very very special one because we are counting down in mere moments to the end of a contest that happened on our Bill of Rights they bookends a contest that started a constitution day way back in some time way back in September can you tell us a little bit about yes so this contest came out of our Constitution Day celebration which was a four hour long celebration on Constitution Day which is

1:50 also another holiday near and dear to the Bill of Rights Institute staff hearts and so on Constitution Day we launched a contest for teachers across America to discuss with their students what each Laura bassoon um what coming what uniting meant to them and to submit a less than three minute video about what that conversation was like with their students so we had teachers from

2:10 across the country submit there their contest entries and we are honored to have selected a winner mr. Caudill from Colorado since you sent in his video on Twitter and so we will premiere that along with all the other videos of our runner ups little excerpts from a runner up videos in just a few

2:30 minutes that’s right sorry just in mere moments we are at the literally at the edge of our seats on this one looking forward to those and that’s just one of many ways to celebrate the live rights day to take a look at this big theme of what brings us together we love that teachers and students work together on these so if I may pose a question and it’s the

2:52 question we do get all the time verbally you know in person and through emails all the time what of the ten amendments is your favorite and why so I think they’re all important there’s not one that’s and they’re not in order of importance but I would have to say for me it would be the First Amendment okay so because they’re the fundamental freedoms that all the

3:14 rest of our rights and freedoms rest on right so let’s see if I can do this again we have freedom of speech freedom of assembly freedom of the press freedom of religion and then freedom of petition and people often will forget the fruit of our Creed of a petition one because at the time that the freedom of petition was actually the way that a lot of people who didn’t have voting rights

3:35 could engage in civic life they would petition their government for things especially women but so all of those the freedom of speech the freedom of assembly those are things that not every country has its foundation and there are many countries around the world even today where those rights are not able to be expressed the right to practice your religion of your conscience the right to

3:57 to to to have freedom of speech freedom of the press you here so I think that especially today the First Amendment would be the one that really stands out for me that is great I really like nine myself it’s nice and open it talks about the concept of that there are other rights and what is written down and what

4:17 is it and I just like philosophically I like that it’s it opens up discussion much like the discussion you can have with your students or your teachers using any of the materials that we have in this subject for this and more materials you can turn to my Bri org slash Bill of Rights day and see a lot of things that we put together right so a lot of our materials are on resources that might be

4:39 our I dot org but we put together this special page of all of our resources that are especially for bill of rights day so you can go to my Bri dot org slash Bill of Rights Day and I’ll take you right there right exactly so we won’t be going into much of that right now because there’s so much to see on all of our pages but today is all about these submissions and you mentioned before what the general idea of these submissions were can you tell us about

5:00 the winner yeah so mister could be us class was actually this whole video was designed by his students they produced it they filmed it they put it together he worked with them on constitution day to have a lot of guests come in and discuss what it means to be United what it means to be civically engaged they recorded all of those and then they went on to to ask themselves in small groups

5:21 that looked like groups of three what it means to be United in 2019 and so the students all submitted all these amazing videos and then a group of students put them all together mr. Cordell was a high school history teacher he’s now the media specialist at his school that’s it’s wonderful that teachers and students work together on these things and we know that this is these are just a few of many things that teachers and

5:43 students do if in the future other classrooms put together videos is there any way to share them oh absolutely so we whenever we’re at one of our programs we tell students I haven’t been in the classroom for a couple of years and I dearly miss seeing student work and so if you ever have a really amazing day or have a really amazing lesson and your husband want to hear about it please send it to me I

6:04 would love to see the amazing things you’re doing in the classrooms the reason we host these contests at all is that we honor and respect our teachers and we want to make sure that we can magnify the amazing work that you and your students are doing teachers around the country are doing such incredible things creative things that are really powerful and we always want to take the opportunity to magnify the effect of

6:26 those by sharing them with audiences bigger than them maybe their classroom or maybe their their local community so please if you ever have a lesson especially if it uses one of our resources but any lesson that you’re really enjoying send it to us and we’d love to share it absolutely so I’m hearing contact us through our many social media platforms check out resources stuff my Bri org and

6:48 celebrate Bill of Rights Day yourselves but I think without further ado yeah it is time to see these these top videos that we’ve been sent in so let’s check out in celebration of Constitution Day

7:08 on Tuesday September 17th we pose the question what unites us in 2019 to help us answer that question we ask civil servants in our community to come speak to our American history students each spoke about the Civic values that they value the most demonstrate in their profession and believe unite and

7:28 strengthen our community we were joined by local judges who spoke about the importance of justice and responsibility police and firefighters elaborated on courage and vigilance while sharing inspirational stories about how the recent tragedies in our community have actually brought people together City Council members and mayor’s expounded on

7:49 initiative and resourcefulness military servicemen shared how honored perseverance find their purpose and role in creating a better society after having the opportunity to listen to these esteemed guests students were better equipped to answer the question what unites us

8:22 I think that unites America the most in responsibility okay so what unites us in

8:55 2019 together as a united what unites us in 2019 is our freedoms that we get from the Constitution our rights to freedom of speech religion and price in 2019

9:21 a lot of people believe that the United States it’s more slip today than ever before because of the extremes on both sides of the political spectrum the people who are far left and far right are a lot closer to each other than people think the reason why the left and right political spectrum is more of a circle than it is a line for example the

9:42 farthest right libertarians believe that the US you keep our troops out of international affairs and therefore want peace the furthest left liberals want to help people internationally however want to do it through peaceful interventions like the United Nations both extremes want peace the people on the extreme ends have the same goals but have different ways in

10:03 which they want to achieve them in this sense we’re all brought together under what the United States flag represents what makes us Americans we are at ie diverse country not only ethnically but also diverse in our political beliefs and opinions we are united by our

10:24 beliefs and our freedoms and natural rights that are defined by the Constitution all Americans have the opportunity to be active citizens and vote for people to represent them in local state and federal offices every vote is counted equally not only do we have the freedom to choose who represents us but we also have the

10:44 freedom to make our own life choices as long as they don’t hurt others the Constitution protects our freedom at the end of the day we all come together as Americans what do you think unites us in 2019 I

11:08 think that people are less apathetic in some ways even though we can tend to lash out on social media and do some of those things that are not appropriate people tend to care a little bit more we’re more well-informed and we tend to have passion even if it’s about a specific I believe that the freedom of

11:28 speech is I think what unites us as a country is our patriotism no matter what our political differences are we all want a strong country that is safe for everyone I think it is concern for the future generations for the planet for society for where where our world is

11:49 going in the future as you can see everyone has different ideas of what unites us in 2019 and that’s precisely what unites us the diversity of these ideas and the freedom to express the Constitution the Constitution provides all American citizens with the freedom to pursue life liberty and happiness

12:12 [Music] hey guys um my name is Kelsey and I’m a member of women’s Chamber Choir here at Andover and it’s a really great thing that we have here because it creates a community with many people from offensive backgrounds through our like love of singing and we get to like talk

12:32 about all of our different views on like what our pieces mean and so it really just creates an atmosphere where we can express ourselves I remember of the African Student Association at low-birth high school this is a club where we were able to share our different cultures within the African Diaspora [Music]

12:59 Milberg span gives students an opportunity to express themselves through music people and classroom bands work as a team to practice songs and perform concerts students share their passion for music and help each other grow to become better musicians

13:19 eight hours eastery what unites us in 2019 our love for gaining knowledge faith that we have on ourselves and others understanding aspirations freedom

13:45 [Music] is how well they work together right absolutely it’s so sweet he makes me miss kids I had like I said I haven’t been in the classroom in a little while yeah I miss those kinds of group project yeah but it’s really great seeing both

14:05 the creativity but also you learn a lot and they’re not it’s new to you or if it’s it’s old information it’s a really good way to go so counter to the narrative of what a lot of adolescents are experiencing that many students really do think that there are things that bring them together as community and I was great to see that yeah thank you and I like to think that it’s not

14:26 the end of something but the start of new conversation all the time we always hope that’s where we are speaking of which this contest is not the end but at the beginning of a new one because yes we are ready to launch a new contest that you can do this school year and it comes up very very soon it’s called weave the students it’s an essay contest you may be familiar with for

14:48 more information the information on the we the students contest as well as the way to submit is going to be launched officially at 7:00 a.m. Eastern Time 6:00 a.m. Central and I was told that is also 4:00 a.m. a Pacific time here in the United States and that will be at my Bri dot org slash we the students

15:08 contest a real briefly it is a an essay that’s between 500 and 800 words and the topic is what does civil discourse mean to you the directions and rules are on there but just generally the idea is marrying together the idea of theory and practice when it comes to civil discourse and we want to hear from your

15:29 personal experience but also some of the ideas that you research on that so that’s gonna launch now and goes until April 15th tax day stays a good deadline to no good to get students oriented to tax day diem deadline early on exactly exactly speaking of finances there is a prize that goes prize first

15:50 place winner is $7,500 there are series of five runner-up winners at 1500 each and eight second-place winners at 500 rupees so there’s quite a lot there for people and and it’s a fantastic opportunity to have these conversations with your students a 500 to 800 words essay is something that a lot of our teachers end up assigning

16:10 over the course of a number of months where they’re working with either the ela teachers or it’s part of their curricular cycle so they can they can have their students engage in that national contest but also the national dialogue exactly so teachers out there encourage your students to take a look at my Bri dot org slash we the students contest yeah and that’s also the hashtag

16:33 for this contest so as we look for us on social media you can follow that hashtag we the students contest as we showcase different essays that have been written or resources that can support the writing of the essay and you can always find us on social media we are across all the major platforms for adults we’re thinking about tik-tok and as we as we

16:56 continue to develop resources for you or teachers we’re gonna be focusing a lot on our YouTube channels so please subscribe and click that ring bell so that you can get notifications for when we put up a new video wonderful well I think everybody has some bill of rights day to celebrate I think we’ve taken enough of your time so have a wonderful wonderful bill of rights day on behalf of the Bill of Rights Institute and we hope you hear from you soon take care thanks

17:20 [Music]