Newsletter: Tuesday, November 8th

Although there is plenty to share this week, I'm proudest to share the wonderful work the kids did in running the CFI Mock Election on Monday. To be honest, this election proved to be a little tricky in regards to following the issues while learning about the process by which we elect a president. That said, these kids did a truly amazing job and were very excited each time the candidates or the election came up in our Morning Meeting.

We spent most of our day on Monday conducting the school-wide election. We began by thinking of questions other students at CFI would ask about presidential elections. Among others, these included: How old do you need to be to vote? Why are elections on Tuesdays? How does someone run for president? How does a candidate win the election? Each of the kids chose one of these questions, researched it, and created a Power Point slide explaining the answer.

Then it was time for the actual school election. Here is a glimpse of their work via photographs...

The kids broke into groups of two and three people. Each group was assigned a classroom
to which they delivered ballots, explained the voting process, monitored the vote,
and returned the ballots to our classroom. They also helped CFI students complete
a short survey regarding their familiarity with the candidates and election. Kindergarten and
first grade classes did not participate. Their teachers felt they may be
too young.

Here is a photo of one of our groups returning from a 5th grade classroom where
they collected ballots.

Each class' ballots were kept separate so we could analyze data class-by-class.

The kids then worked to tally the vote. They counted votes from the classroom
they were in charge of as well as tallied responses from the surveys. Questions on the
surveys included: Do you know who your parents are voting for? Have you talked about the
candidates with your parents? What do you know about each of the candidates?

The rule was that all two or three members of each group had to get the same results
when counting the ballots and tallying responses to the survey questions. This proved
to be a little tricky at times. 

These tallies were collected in their math journals. We later combined the results from
each class to find the results for the whole school. 

The groups then created bar graphs sharing the information they had
gathered from each classroom. .These classroom results were delivered back
to the teachers so the classes could compare their own results against that of the
whole school.

Our survey helped us learn that 61 students were able to share a fact about Trump,
57 were able to share something about Clinton, and 5 were able to share something
about both Stein and Johnson.

About 2/3 of the kids in grades 2-5 knew who their parents voting for.

101 students had discussed the candidates with their parents. 59 students
had not discussed candidates with their parents.

And here are the results of our 2016 CFI Mock Election:
Hillary Clinton 106 votes, Donald Trump 24 votes, Gary Johnson 20 votes, and Jill Stein 9 votes.
Our CFI Mock Elections are generally very close and independent candidates rarely
receive votes. For this reason, these results were far outside
the norm.

At the end of the school day we shared our learning with the school (minus the younger kids) and revealed the results. As expected, everyone was very respectful. It was a wonderful experience for our kids. I hope they shared something about it with you at home.

Before leaving for the day we discussed the real election once again. The kids wondered if adults HAD to vote. They wondered if it was okay to share with one another who they voted for. They wondered who might win on Tuesday. I explained the  popular vote was seemingly pretty close but many polls were saying Clinton had a large lead in electoral votes but that we'd really have to wait and see because you just never know. As I type this at 9:07 on Tuesday night...it is indeed close. Very close.