Cultivating Tomorrow's Civic Leaders

0:01 This podcast spotlight for success is our way of highlighting the incredible success stories happening in education right here in our home state of Georgia. Today, we're thrilled to be joined by Dr Randall, who has made a significant impact in the field of social studies, education and through his work with the Center for Civic Engagement. We'll explore his journey, insights and the positive changes he's creating for students and teachers and here at GCSS. So let's get started. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, Dr Randall. Sure. So Georgia native. One of my friends called it. georgia born, georgia bred. One day I'll be Georgia dead, but lifelong Georgia native, a firm believer in social studies education.

0:48 I'm the CEO of the Georgia Center for Civic Engagement, which really was an outgrowth of my doctoral research when I realized we just didn't have a lot of civic education resources in Georgia. Excellent. So what kind of things are you hoping to get out of the conference today? Well, this is like a family reunion. So, this is probably my 16th or 17th conference, so come and see all the friends of the other vendors and, of course, the teachers that we work with. A lot of the teachers we serve are members here and are visiting. That's wonderful, and how did you get involved with the Georgia Center for Civics Education?

1:33 So I grew up in a program that did a model legislature and stuff. One day they started paying me- volunteered. Then they started paying me, which was great. A few years later I had a board meeting. They hired me as CEO, that's wonderful. Isn't it great how that happens. So I've been involved really in the program since I was in middle school Wow. And one of the most influential and impactful programs I ever participated in was our model legislature. And I remember walking in as a high school freshman into the state house representatives and it took my breath away and just the power of that moment. You know just a young kid from Dalton, georgia, you know, who hadn't been out of the carpet capital for for much.

2:16 But here I am in the, the state legislature, in the state house, and and honestly you know I've now been doing this professionally for 21 years. And you know, take students every year to the Capitol and we do the model legislature. And it still takes my breath away. But I remember that as a student and that's a reminder for me to do the same thing for the students to pay it forward. That's wonderful. Can you tell us more about that program that you're running this year, this being an election year; and I understand there's a lot of students involved? So we have lots of programs. So we have over 250,000 Georgia K-12 students involved in a mock election that's going on right now. In fact it closes out tomorrow. We do it early because the election platform people ask us last year please don't do it on election day because you crashed the system last year.

3:03 So we're doing it early and what's interesting is and we've been doing the mock election now for 10 or 12 years and it is such a predictor of what's going to happen for Georgia. But we absolutely will not release the data until election day because we don't want to become a polling source or a news bot. For us it's about the students developing that civic muscle and we do it every November and we do real ballot measures it's not your favorite ice cream because we want the students to get in the habit. In November we go and vote. It becomes a part of their civic muscle, and it's just what we do. We show up because it's our right, but we show up because it's our duty.

3:48 Oh, that's great, Dr Randall. Is there anything? else you'd like to share with the audience about things that are going on. So we also have a model legislature program and that's the program that just took my breath away. In the state capitol we have 800 students in two weeks coming to high school students coming to Georgia capitol. We take over the house, the senate, the tour ropes come down, they're in the desk. We have a student speaker of the House, student lieutenant governor, student governor. We're in the Supreme Court hearing cases. In fact, that's a competition. The final case is actually listened to by judges from the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. Holy smokes. So I mean, I like to tease and say we let our students put on the robes of democracy and we're teaching them that in order to do the we, the people part, they have to be the people, and so that's what we're all about.

4:31 Wow, dr Randall, thank you so much for speaking with us and your participation. Thanks for what you do. Your work is so important to supporting the educators, so thank you. All right, thank you. Have a good day you too.