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Students evaluate their personal consumption choices and the factors that influence those choices. Utilizing information in a table, students create an algebraic equation to compare embodied energy in cups made of different materials. After reviewing information related to the environmental impacts and the costs of a number of different cups, students must choose which cup to purchase.

Students examine information compiled by the Youth Violence Project to explore recent trends in violence among youth. Students create a variety of graphs to represent various statistics related to conflict among youth. They then reflect on possible root causes of the observed trends.

Students examine how choices in daily activities and nutrition affect individual well-being and sustainability. They consider how caloric intake relates to calories burned. They read nutrition labels, review recommended daily allowances, and solve algebraic equations to determine healthy eating habits.

Students examine growing and declining populations and predict future population growth based on current population growth rates. Integers are plotted on a coordinate plane to examine the pattern of population decline in Japan. Students discuss the consequences of different patterns of population growth.

Through a simulation activity, students learn about microcredit lending—a financing structure that supports small-scale business ventures and is designed to help people rise out of poverty. Students solve algebraic equations in order to complete a microcredit loan application.

Students explore number patterns related to the disposal and recycling of plastic bottles. Long-term trends in waste production per person are graphed, and students break down the percentages of various materials that compose our waste stream.

Lessons 3 and 4 critically examine the basic concepts and rules of our constitutional democracy, focusing on its inherent weaknesses and the intergenerational work needed to defend against abuses of power. (150 minutes)

In Lesson 3, students critically examine the conceptual framework of the Constitution and Bill of Rights to understand the internal threats from inherent weaknesses in human nature that were institutionalized in these documents and in the Civil War Amendments. Students are introduced to a third entity that existed at the time of founding – artificial persons as corporations – and then explore the young government’s dilemma of where to fit this entity into the conceptual framework. Using Socratic method in small groups, students critically examine key legal changes and their social consequences on the balance of power during the first 160 years of the democracy journey. (100 minutes)

Lesson 5 explores a game-changing action in real time: How to amend the U.S. Constitution to defend against current injuries and usurpations of human rights and to restore rule to the (human) people. Students review the constitutional amendment process, then consider ways to address an internal threat to democracy by amendment. Using films and interactive activities, students evaluate proposed amendments and consider social consequences with, and without, such an amendment. Students reflect on how the amendment process influences social progress, then discuss whether the Supreme Court should be made more democratic and ways this could be achieved.

Lessons 3 and 4 critically examine the basic concepts and rules of our constitutional democracy, focusing on its inherent weaknesses and the intergenerational work needed to defend against abuses of power. (150 minutes)

In Lesson 4, students continue to explore the democracy journey, starting with people’s movements for civil liberties and civil rights during the 1950s to 1970s. Students are introduced to the Powell Memo of 1971 and the strategic legal campaign, organized by the Monied Power, to influence political campaign outcomes. Students explore the landmark laws and social consequences that resulted from this still-ongoing campaign and then reflect on the democracy journey, creating their own narrative of who rules.