![]() "It's not always one guy doing it, it's a lot of guys. "It seems to be that there's somebody different every day," Zimmerman said. The victory, which improved the Lions to 12-2, was just another example of how Leon has leaned more on hard work and less on talent to jump out as one of the top teams in Class 6A. "He hadn't been on varsity all year and now he's our four-hole hitter."Ĭampbell's first career home run - a three-run shot over the left-field fence - put the game out of reach and sealed Leon's 5-0 win over the Timberwolves. "All the kids were asking why I had him on JV, and I said because you have an idiot coach," Zimmerman said. Leon players were shocked that Campbell was on JV, so much so they had questioned head coach Robert Zimmerman decision. Called up from JV at the start of the season after Leon's third baseman had been injured, he has responded. ![]() Riding a narrow 2-0 lead over area powerhouse Chiles late in the game, Leon sophomore Jay Campbell stepped up to bat. In fact, it was a junior-varsity promotion who shined the brightest Monday. The Lions' roster isn't stacked with all-stars or Division I recruits. Leon isn't a team that has dictated its success through just one or two players. Without a high-quality civics education, many of us would miss opportunities to elevate our own voices and hear the voices of others.View Gallery: High school baseball: Leon defeats Chiles So many of the decisions that shape our lives are made through our participation in government and community life. If the first time you’re expected to participate in democracy is when you turn eighteen, you probably won’t fully understand how your vote impacts your community and the things you care about. ![]() The rates of participation in local elections are very poor. Only around 53 percent of eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-olds - my cohort - voted in the 2020 presidential election, and that was considered high. Why is it important to reach K–12 students?Ĭivics has really slipped away from school curricula it’s barely funded in the United States. We teach them how to navigate local resources, identify stakeholders, and propose solutions for community challenges, whether it’s the introduction of a composting program or the push for an extended city bus line. We also offer a custom curriculum to help students build core skills for effective civic participation. Students set goals and earn points for activities like completing relevant classwork, attending meetings at the local library, listening to a talk with a local public official, or joining their school’s student council. Our platform, which is used by schools and youth organizations, offers a game-based learning model that helps middle- and high-school students explore their communities and build leadership skills. How do you tailor the information to kids? My love of soccer made me want to participate in conversations about access to parks and other public spaces, so I started attending meetings of the local community board. It might be activated by a passion for art, science, or sport. It means encouraging kids to pinpoint issues that interest them, then helping them find ways to get involved and make an impact.Ĭivic engagement will look different for everyone. It means not only teaching young people about their constitutional rights but also providing them with a deeper understanding of how power operates - on a personal, community, city, state, and federal level. What does an effective civics education look like? I retired from soccer in 2017, and in 2018 I started Local Civics while studying education policy at Oxford. I wanted to find a way to connect the young people I coached to their communities and empower them to be leaders. Those experiences helped me reflect on my own role as a citizen, particularly as I traveled across Europe and lived in different cities. That brought me to Iceland, Italy, and the UK, where I continued to coach young players. After graduating, I landed a job on Wall Street, but a year later I left to pursue my dream of playing professional soccer. I was on the Columbia women’s soccer team and spent a lot of time mentoring local youth through sports. As the founder and CEO of Local Civics, an education-technology startup, Beverly Leon ’14CC, ’20BUS encourages kids and teens to become active members of their communities.
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