Bureaucracy? What’s that?
Mrs. Kayla Watt, Government teacher, teaches her class. Mrs. Watt teaches Economics, American Government and AP Government. “Political socialization is absolutely a thing, meaning that parents do have an affect on their child’s political beliefs,” Mrs. Watt said.
Mrs. Kayla Watt, the AP Government teacher, decided to make an activity that focuses on the difficulties of a bureaucracy. They learned about the struggles of government and got to experience what it is really like.
Mrs. Watt said, “It allows the students to have a hands on learning experience and they can experience the frustration of bureaucracy as high school students.”
Some of you maybe be asking, what even is a bureaucracy? The definition of it is: a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials rather than by elected representatives.
The group of students has been doing well and she hopes to improve the activity for the future. It’s important for students to learn about this topic.
Mrs. Watt also stated, “I do plan on doing it next year and every year I do it, [it] will get a little bit better. So far the feedback has been good, so I definitely want to do it next year.”
The activities that the class participated in were very fascinating, according to the students. They had a feel for what a bureaucracy was like in the real world and had some fun along the way.
“This activity has been pretty interesting. It’s really showing us a real life example of how the bureaucracy works, which is what we just started to learn. It’s actually a pretty difficult activity to get through,” said senior Cassie Ward.
Senior Payton Renninger stated, “I wanted to do the bureaucracy scavenger hunt so I can try and get a free FRQ question for our unit 2 test next Tuesday. I like the scavenger hunt because hunt is showing us, AP Government students, how the bureaucracy works.”
Students participated in an another activity involving pieces of paper. The catch was that the teachers couldn’t sign certain papers unless they had the other papers from different teachers. They did this until it worked its way back to Mrs. Nicole Stiles, French teacher.
The lesson is that Bureaucracy is so long and there are many outside factors that can alter the progression of getting something done in a bureaucracy.