• What students learned
• Other reflections
• Assigning students to groups
• Making groups more dynamic
• Questioning strategies
• Keeping students on task
• Achieving standards
• Hands-on learning
• Challenges for students
• How you know the lesson is working
• Role of the teacher
• Teaching controversial issues
• Constructivist teaching
• Using a variety of teaching methodologies
• Connecting constructivism and civics
• Her background
• Her evolution as a teacher
• How to get started
• Role of technology

Leslie Martin teaches a two-semester course on economic, legal, and political systems to ninth-grade students at West Forsyth High School in Clemmons, North Carolina. The course is called a freshman seminar in recognition of the fact that more than half of these students are considered gifted. These interview excerpts relate to a lesson in which students participated in a simulation, assuming roles first as the President and Presidential advisors and then as Members of Congress to develop and negotiate a Federal budget.