• Lesson value
• Curriculum context
• Using various methodologies
• Teaching challenges
• Worksheets
• Questioning
• Learning challenges
• Signs of success for the lesson
• Cooperative learning
• Groups
• Lessons learned
• Hands-on learning and civic engagement
• His response to the lesson
• Salient legal issues
• Teaching about controversial topics
• His background
• Using textbooks
• Professional development
• Modeling democratic principles
• Challenges to civic education
• Signs of success for civics

Matt Johnson, who has been in the social studies department at Benjamin Banneker Senior High School in Washington, D.C., for 10 years, is seen in the workshop video teaching a senior honors-level constitutional law class. (He also is featured in Workshop 4, teaching a lesson in AP comparative government.) In these interview excerpts, he discusses why he uses constructivist teaching methodologies and their connection to civic education. The lesson involves small student teams presenting both sides of an argument to a panel of Supreme Court Justices. The case is a hypothetical one developed by the teacher that focuses on the subject of the constitutional rights of students.