Middle-school teacher Michele Cumberland began her career as a music teacher. And while she is still passionate about music — she is teaching guitar as an elective this semester — citizenship education is the subject that has most of her attention these days.
Her deep dedication to the subject was sparked in 2017 when she attended a teachers’ institute on parliamentary democracy in Victoria, BC.
CIVIX founder Taylor Gunn was a presenter at the event, and hearing him talk changed the trajectory of her teaching career. “I’ve never seen anyone so excited about his subject matter,” she says. “I thought, ‘This is amazing. Why aren’t I doing this?’ So I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Fast-forward six years, and Cumberland — a grade 7-8 teacher at Holy Cross independent elementary school in Penticton, B.C — is now a democracy education innovator. She is dedicated to bringing citizenship education to every grade, as an advocate, resource, and mentor to other teachers.
“I can’t even imagine not being involved in this now,” she says. “This has become a real core issue.” Cumberland sees her work as addressing a significant need to support and motivate teachers to become interested in civic education.
“A big part of it is teachers don’t feel confident teaching on the topic,” says Cumberland, observing that like the general population, not all teachers vote. “If you don’t vote, often you feel like you don’t understand how the system works … but there has to be an interest level to get them there to want to teach this.”
Cumberland is doing everything she can to help build that interest at her school. She has developed democracy and citizenship lessons for grades 3-8 and supports her colleagues in using them.
“The way I’m getting people to do it is by making it as easy as possible for them,” she says. “My room is filled with boxes of resources, from everywhere, then I have grade level packages in Ziploc bags. And I can say ‘here, take whatever you like from here. It’s easy. This is stuff that’s already done for you’.”
Cumberland is also in the midst of developing a comprehensive cross-curricular project for K-8. The work involves reviewing curriculum requirements, finding connections to civic education across subjects and grades, and designing scaffolded lessons and activities for each grade.
For instance, kindergarten students will learn vocabulary, who their elected representatives are, and look at images of the legislature and parliament buildings. Elected officials are invited to class to answer questions, and kids do simple voting activities.
How to be an active member of society has to be taught, like reading has to be taught.
“As we progress into higher grades students learn more each year about how democracy and government work and how to be an active citizen. We learn about our responsibilities and rights as Canadians,” Cumberland explains.
This project is designed to help address what she sees as interrelated problems — a lack of citizenship education for teachers, resulting lack of interest, and inconsistent curriculum requirements that allow civic education to be easily deprioritized.
“How to be an active member of society has to be taught, like reading has to be taught,” says Cumberland. “If we start teaching kids in school, then people will just know about it, we won’t have to teach adults anymore. Adults will grow up knowing. I think that’s so important. But the question is always how do you get to those teachers?”
At Holy Cross, Cumberland credits Student Vote with helping to generate school-wide interest in learning about democracy and voting.
“When we do have an election year, it’s a huge deal,” she says. “We go all out, we make T-shirts, we do everything. The whole school, from grade three and up, all get involved.”
During campaigns, the older students vote on their top three priority issues, research the candidates’ stances on them, and present these to the younger students. Candidates and media come in — “We’ll always have all the candidates. It’s become a thing now here, which is really fun” — and on Student Vote day, the Grade 8s run the election for the rest of the school.
The experience is empowering for everyone and helps to reinforce the idea that citizens can have an impact on the systems that govern us.
“We have to give kids hope for the future,” Cumberland says. “They have to feel like they have some control over their lives. If we make them feel hopeful, in that knowledge that they are the future voters and leaders of this country, that’s deeply meaningful. We can help them to understand that, and that doesn’t go away.”
At a Glance
Name: Michele Cumberland
Location: Penticton, BC
Grades Taught: 7 ,8
Subjects Taught: Social studies, English language arts, Careers
Years Teaching: 24
Years Involved with CIVIX: 6
CIVIX programs used: Student Vote, Rep Day, CTRL-F, PoliTalks
Key Motivation: "I believe strong global citizens are active citizens of their home communities; their schools, their cities, their provinces or territories and their countries. Our rights as Canadians come with many responsibilities that, if not practiced, lead to a weakening of a democratic society.”