Frisch held student council elections earlier this week, but there was a very special political project going on at Frisch for much longer. Mrs. Kaplan’s junior classes have been working on a Presidential Primary project during the year, in which students tracked the races of the candidates vying to become the presidential nominees for the Democratic and Republican parties.
Working in groups, students created webpages – under the guidance of Rabbi Pittinsky, Director of Educational Technology – for their respective candidates that included links, videos, documents, pictures, cartoons, polling results and more. As candidates dropped out, students wrote “political obituaries” and were assigned to a track a different candidate still in the race.
The assignment is a perfect example of project-based learning, engaging students through real-world applications that extend beyond the classroom. It has also helped the political education of our students, many of whom will soon be eligible to vote for the first time.