BLAINE, Minn. – (Nov. 10, 2016) – The students at Westwood Middle School in the Spring Lake Park School District may be to young to vote, but the are never to young to learn. “In light of our presidential election have been spending time learning about candidates, topics, issues, and having their kid civic duty to share their vote which has created a lot of conversation and our hope is that they go home and have that conversation with their family,” said teacher Deeanna Enstad. The idea behind kids voting is to teach both the importance of voting and how the process works.
“We set up our polling location here to match what would be an actual location so we are checking in by last name. Our student ambassadors are helping us our so they highlight their name, receive their ballot and pen, they are ushered into our secure location to get to vote, then put their ballot in and receive their sticker,” said Enstad.
The students and ambassadors are getting a real opportunity to think and create conversation about politics.
“I learned that a lot of people have a lot of different opinions from watching the news every single day and just realizing what’s going on. Their is definitely in my opinion some candidates that would be better for the job and some that wouldn’t and it’s really nice because we’ll see just what the school actually thinks about this,” said student Katelyn Thoennes. Amid an election with so much coverage and rhetoric, the idea is to keep students interested. “In all of our social studies classes our teachers are talking about it in a way so that they understand some of the controversy but that it’s still real. No matter some of the things that are being said they’re having the chance to have the conversation and understand it not just here, what they do on social media. They can ask questions and get a little bit more understanding,” said Enstad.
Minnesota Civic Youth is a non-partisan voter education program committed to creating lifelong voting habits in children It gives a chance to show that politics doesn’t have to be boring. “I think it’s really fun just because it’s my first election that I have actually like thought about and have listened to,” said Thoennes. The program also allows the student voters to think independently.
“Kids might originally come with what they are hearing at home but a lot of activities they are doing, using things like isidewith.com where the kids are being asked questions and then when they receive that name at the end they are actually shocked because it might be different than what they are hearing at home. That is the first time they are recognizing that they get a chance to have their own opinions and start talking about them,” said Enstad. The young voters at Westwood may not cont in this election but the experience they learned will carry for a lifetime.
District wide the final tally had 60% of students voting for Hillary Clinton while 31% voted for Donald Trump.
