Massachusetts State Senator Jason Lewis recently visited Malden High School to have discussions with students, visiting the classrooms of history teachers Michelle Filer, Jonathan Copithorne, and Kurtis Scheer, to talk about topics related to the classes’ Generation Citizen projects.
Generation Citizen is a non-profit organization that works to ensure that students in the United States get an effective action civics education, which gives them the knowledge and skills that are necessary to be an active citizen. Classes will focus on issues affecting their community and come up with an action plan. Students will then present their action projects to local officials on Generation Citizen Civics Day.
Senator Jason Lewis first visited Scheer’s history class, which was working on increasing funds for mental health care for their Generation Citizen project. Their discussion focused on mental health care.
Lewis then visited Copithorne’s history class, which focused on drugs
and the opioid crisis for their project. They discussed about what the state was doing to address the opioid crisis as well as drug abuse within Massachusetts.
Filer’s history class is working on Health Care and they are trying to get a health care program and facility built at Malden High. They were discussing about MassHealth and the state of their programs to see if there’s anything the state can do to support any local clinics or local health care programs.
Filer mentioned that they were able to get in contact with Jason Lewis to visit Malden High as “one of the [Generation Citizen] groups’ goals was to write an email to [Lewis] to ask [him] about [his] views on health care and if [he] was willing to come in to speak with [their] class.” They got a response from his staff saying that he wanted to come talk to them and also any other classes.
Other classes that focused on the state level for their Generation Citizen projects were also interested in talking with Lewis. Filer added that it had “worked out that during the time [he] was able to come, they had their class at that time”.
Students will be selected from these classes to represent their class at the Generation Citizen Civics Day along with other middle and high schools at the Massachusetts State House on May 10, 2018.
