St. Thomas Aquinas High School

The "We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution" program is an initiative that encourages students to take a detailed look at the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and the impact of the Constitution on America throughout history and in the modern day.  It encourages and promotes the development of an active and informed citizenry.

This year, students in Mr. Gaston's US History I Honors classes were exposed to two of the units of study from the program. Those units dealt with the historical and philosophical foundations of the Constitution and the debates and processes involved in creating the Constitution.

The culminating event of the study of these units takes the form of a simulated congressional hearing. These hearings consist of students taking on the role of experts on a given topic and presenting their findings to a given question before a panel of judges. The hearing is broken down into two parts, a four-minute oral presentation where the students answer the question, weaving together their knowledge and appropriate primary and secondary source material, and a six-minute civil discourse with the judges, who follow-up the answer with questions that enable the students to demonstrate their depth of understanding regarding the Constitution and its application.