On November 1, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Department of Education awarded $650,000 to a collaborative between the nonprofit iCivics and 3 university centers at Harvard, Arizona State and Tufts. The steering committee for this group, which will be designing a bipartisan guide for integrating history and civics, consists of 30 individuals on 3 task forces: history, political theory and civics, and pedagogy. The initiative is part of NEH’s A More Perfect Union initiative, which TXCER reported on last month.

This month, in Washington, D.C., Johns Hopkins University and the Atlantic co-sponsored a conference on Civics and the Future of Democracy. At this forum, students, educators, administrators and other experts gathered together to discuss pressing issues in civic education. You can watch all the sessions for free by clicking on this paragraph.

Curious about civic education on the ground? Závon Billlups, a civics educator in Massachusetts, has shared his perspective with Columbia University‘s Hechinger Report on what it was like to implement Massachusetts’ statewide civic education curricula in the 2018-2019 school year. Tackling sensitive and controversial topics together, Mr. Billlups reflects on how his students’ civic discourse matured, and how he grew as a professional as well.