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How can you teach your kids or students the importance of voting?
First, be a role model by voting in upcoming local, congressional, and presidential elections.
Second, print and give kids one of these new coloring sheets in English and Spanish from MomsRising that teach our littlest learners about voting and why it matters.
The coloring sheets show a child dressed as a superhero.
Next to the superhero is the phrase: “Be a Voter. Raise a Voter. / Conviértete en Votante. Cría un Votante.”
“This is a great opportunity for families to talk together about what voting is, why it matters, and build a culture of civic engagement from the very beginning,” said Karen Showalter, senior campaign director for MomsRising.
Other Ways to Get Kids Involved
MomsRising also has these tips:
Make a Campaign Poster. Let kids make their own campaign poster or an imaginary election for snack choice, or story time, etc., or it might be an actual campaign poster if the child has a favorite candidate. Give them construction or printer paper, markers, crayons, stickers, and let them get to work.
Bumper Stickers. Get full page label sheets and cut them long way to create a sticker approximately the size of a bumper sticker. Encourage kids to come up with an issue that matters to them and a slogan to get people to care about it. Challenge them to design their own bumper sticker to get their message across.
Take Your Kids While You Vote. Take a field trip to your voting site and let your kids watch you vote. They can help put your ballot in the scanning machine and get their own “I voted” sticker.
PBS’s Kids Democracy Project also has presidential trading cards, kid-friendly “meet the candidates” guides, and more.
What will you do to show your kids the power of voting?!
Other Ways to Involve Students in Change
With student pressure, universities across the nation are beginning to make statements and take action to address the systemic racism that impacts students, staff, and faculty of color.
These statements from universities come as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement. Discussion is growing about injustices that Blacks, Latinos, and other people of color face from law enforcement and other authorities. This gives students room to confront university administrators about racial injustices happening on campuses.
Many universities are committing to change and putting new policies in place.
Write a Medical School Oath to Fight for Social Justice!
Medical students start their journey to be a doctor with an ethical oath.
But the classic Hippocratic Oath and other versions are missing doctors’ modern obligations for social justice.
You can use the Salud America! action pack, “Write a Medical School Oath to Fight for Social Justice,” to write your own medical school oath to reflect doctors’ ever-evolving responsibilities to address systemic racism, social justice, and health equity.
The action pack has materials and technical assistance to help you connect with your peers and school leaders, draft a new or updated medical oath, and build support to address health and social inequities.
“Writing a modern medical school oath can be a meaningful experience for students, and better reflect the evolving dynamics of the profession,” said Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez, director of the Salud America! program and the Institute for Health Promotion Research at UT Health San Antonio. “This is how you can commit to prioritizing racial/ethnic equity and social justice as future doctors.”
Explore More:
Increasing Civic EngagementBy The Numbers
50
percent
of big U.S cities have a local board of health
