Context & Experience - The presidential election of 2012 was significant for our country and for the students at Jesuit Academy.  Most students had an opinion about the candidates, but did not always know where each stood on the issues.  One of the goals of the entire civics course is to help students become more informed citizens that participate in our democracy.  Since many of the students had strong opinions about the candidates, I wanted to see how their viewpoints on the issues stacked up with the candidates' actual stances (not just rhetoric).  Also, our examination of electoral politics demonstrated the importance of each vote in a close election.

Reflection - I was fairly pleased with how this unit turned out.  As part of the final project, students had to complete a voting guide (see below for links to all the projects from the unit) about the presidential candidates.  Throughout the unit, some students struggled to understand the more complex issues (Medicare, Foreign Policy), but most were able to analyze the main themes and describe where each candidate stood.  The social issues of abortion and gay marriage were some of the easiest for students to understand and stirred some interesting debate.  One of the things I noticed while preparing for this unit was how difficult it was to pin down a candidate's position on certain issues, something the students also discovered.