Young adults across San Antonio are voting for the first time this year.
For high schoolers old enough to vote, this presidential election is a hands-on civics lesson, and a teacher in the San Antonio Independent School District has incorporated the election into his lesson plans.
“It's natural to do, especially in a presidential election, and especially in a presidential election year like this one, where the country is so divided and the election is so close,” said Highlands High School teacher Noah Lipman. “It makes for great class discussions.”
Lipman said he has taught his AP Government and Politics class how the electoral process works, and he gave them an assignment to predict the outcome for the presidential contest. They also have to predict which political party will win control of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.
Through these lessons, Lipman said he hoped his students learn the importance of civic responsibility.
“You want them to be able to follow the news, which a lot of people don't follow, really to the amount that they should. You want them to understand the issues behind the candidate, and, most importantly of all, you want them to understand the concept of compromise, which is how our electoral system was based in first place,” Lipman said.
“The idea of a Congress, a Senate, a House, a president, and [the concept] that not everybody's always going to get what they want, and you need to compromise in a civil way, rather than just pure hatred towards the other side, regardless of what they actually believe.”
He and his students — including a couple of first-time voters — will be watching election results at a local pizza place Tuesday night.
Lipman said they’ll have TVs tuned to several different channels to see how each news outlet reports throughout the night.
“Unfortunately, as you can well imagine, there probably will be no results Wednesday night,” Lipman said. “And you probably won't even know until maybe Thursday or Friday, where the election actually turns before the lawsuits start.”
Still, in addition to analyzing the media and what results do come in, Lipman said his students will be watching to see whether Bexar County’s voting totals surpass 2020.
The important thing, Lipman said, is for his students to understand how elections work and how they can be involved.
“If they become fully informed, they can become civically responsible in the future, they can also become part of the solution to the problems that we face,” Lipman said.
