• Civic involvement
• Methodology
• Connecting constructivism and citizenship
• Teaching challenges
• Building consensus and closure
• Student challenges
• Informal assessment
• Getting started
• Forming groups
• Students' presentations
• Lessons learned
• Advice to other teachers
• Newark mayoral campaign
• Remaining neutral
• His background

Jose Velazquez: How do you build consensus? Do they understand what consensus is? If we open up a discussion on the points, will we rehash the points all over again? What I’m so happy about is that the suggestion of how to actually finally bring closure to one of the points that was a point of contention--the 24-hour recreation--came from the students themselves. And the fact that they were able to come to a consensus--that they understood what consensus meant--and do it quickly showed that the closure worked, and that it accomplished its goal.

Our next step is to take this into the real world and have a dialogue, hopefully with the candidates. The students have an agenda. They have a point of view. They have real solid questions that they want to ask. That’s also something that came from the floor. That was really beyond my expectations. I thought I was going to have to really bring finality to the lesson and it turned out to be the opposite. It was totally from the students. That meant the students were really directing the lesson and that was the goal that I think any teacher who tries to do this kind of approach wants to happen.