Students Rule is a civics curriculum focused on practical, personal micropolitics. It began with a question I asked in graduate school: "What would it meant to teach politics as a skill, rather than a science or a vocation?" Students Rule is part of my answer.

I taught five quarters of the class as an elective at HB-Woodlawn in Arlington, VA: first in 2010, two in 2018, and two in 2019. In the class, we spent very little time talking about government. Instead, we talk about rules -- how they're made, kept, and changed. We talk about discourse and debate, social norms and manners, violence, rights, and justice, among other topics. It is very hands-on: as a class project, students pick a rule (or rules) to change at their school, and we work on that throughout the quarter in a structured, step-by-step process.

The class website for the most recent class is still available. The curriculum was previously titled 'Atomic Civics', so some of the course materials still reflect that. 'Atomic', in the sense of the smallest possible unit of a civic body, namely a person-to-person dyad. I prefer the name 'Atomic Civics', but students found it too confusing so I changed it to 'Students Rule'.

As an outside teacher at HB, I did not have access to APS technology. In the most recent quarter, this led me to develop a week of online assignments using a customized WordPress install (stripped of student data). It worked extremely well, and brought out engagement from students who normally were disengaged in class.