iCivics Website Unveiled

Former senator and astronaut John Glenn and retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor teamed up to launch iCivics Ohio and just unveiled a new website designed to bring students up to speed on civic education.

Glenn and Justice O’Connor are concerned with lack of knowledge students have about government and citizenship. The website makes sure civic education isn’t an afterthought for schools and their students.

Ohio students will have the opportunity to access digital civic-education lesson plans made specifically for teachers.

As you may know, I’m an iCivicsrepresentative for the state of Ohio, so this program is very near and dear to my heart.

Please click HEREto read more about the website. And leave a comment below if you have any questions about the program.

 

 

Teachers: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and iCivics Need You – Hurry

Do your students like video games? Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the iCivics team are recruiting 30 teachers or up to 1,200 students for a pilot program to test a popular game called Argument Wars. The program will help create assessments to go with the games.

 

The pilot program will be limited, so apply quickly. The teachers and students need to be in 5-10th grades and have access to computers between September 29 and October 24.

 

What you get for participating:
·         Access to reports of how your students performed in the game
·         A certificate of participation from iCivics

Your students will also learn about landmark Supreme Court cases.

Interested? Contact Alison Atwater for more information. Alison.atwater@icivics.org.

 

Women of the Court

A new portrait was unveiled this week in Washington D.C. that depicts the four women who have served on the U.S. Supreme Court: former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and current Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. The portrait is located at the National Portrait gallery and was painted by artist Nelson Shanks.

The Ohio Supreme Court has had 10 women serve as justices. The first was Florence Allen, who served on the court from 1923 until 1934. It would be another 47 years before the second woman served on the bench. Blanche Krupansky was appointed to the bench in 1981. Since then, there have been eight more women either elected or appointed to the Supreme Court, including the state’s first female Chief Justice, Maureen O’Connor, who was elected in 2010. When I was elected as the 150th justice in 2004, Alice Robie Resnick, Deborah Cook, and Evelyn Lundberg Stratton had already been serving on the court. Yvette McGee Brown began her term in 2011.

It’s also important to note that since January 2011, the Ohio Supreme Court has had a continuous female majority. Here’s a picture taken last year in the Eighth District Courtroom under the historic phrase “This is a Government of Law Not of Men.”


Pictured left to right: Former Justice Yvette McGee Brown,

who lost in last year’s election; Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor;

Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger; and Former Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton,

who retired last year.

Since that picture was taken, two new justices, Sharon Kennedy and Judith French, have joined the court to continue the 4-3 female majority.

I’m honored to have served with all of my colleagues, women and men, who are dedicated to the law.

Could You Pass the U.S. Citizenship Test?

Although most of us become U.S. citizens through birth, people born outside the United States can do so through the naturalization process.

Becoming a naturalized citizen involves preparing for a 100-question civics test, although an applicant is typically asked to answer only 10 questions during the oral exam. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an applicant must answer 6 out of 10 questions correctly to pass the civics portion of the test.

I bring this up because I read a story recently in Parade magazine about former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s iCivics program, for which I am a representative in Ohio. A citizenship questionnaire was part of that article.

Would your civics knowledge allow you to become a U.S. citizen? Check out these questions by clicking the link below—some are pretty tough— see how many you get right.

http://www.parade.com/export/sites/default/news/quiz2/citizenship1.html