Assignment/Activity Title — CAP Congress

Year — Sophomore

Portfolio Competency — Social Awareness

Skill(s) — Writing, Research, Public Performance

For the CAP Congress project I was a democratic Senator from New Mexico. I had to do research about my constituents and
then create a bill that I thought my constituents would like and that would help the majority of them. I learned that a lot of my
constituents were under the poverty line, so they would appreciate a bill that could help them save money. I also learned that climate
change was an important issue in the state of New Mexico and that they were already pushing for a bill that would give their
constituents a tax credit when they purchased solar panels for their house or business. I decided to take this bill and try to push for it to
get passed. Once I had written up my bill, I had to lobby my bill to my fellow Senators and Representatives from the House. This gave
me the chance to talk to different Senators about my bill and convince them to support it if it made it to the floor for debate. During
this phase of the project I made sure to talk about the money that could be saved for every person and state when they use solar
panels. This way I could make sure to appeal to people from all different ideologies and parties. After lobbying, I had to sit down with
my committee and decide which bills we wanted to send to the floor for debate. A few of my fellow Senators and I decided to
omnibus our bill and send it to the floor, but we ultimately decided to remove my part of the bill because it didn’t exactly work with
the rest of the bills in the omnibus. I was still happy to support this bill as I knew it would help my constituents with things like
providing jobs and renewable energy sources. After we decided which bills we were sending onto the floor or debate, we went onto
the floor for debate. During debate we had to make sure to learn a lot about each bill to see whether or not our constituents would
support it and see whether or not we should vote to pass the bill. We also needed to make sure to voice our opinions on bills we didn’t
like and support the bills we did like. After we finished all of the debates and passed bills the President came in and decided whether
or not she wanted to sign the bills. Finally, after this was all over we needed to write a letter to our constituents to tell them about the
session, what bills got passed, and why we voted the way we did on certain bills. We needed to make sure to tell them how we thought
certain bills would help them.
We needed skills like research, writing, and public performance to successfully complete this project. We needed research
skills to be able to research about the constituents in our state and learn about the demographics in that area. This helped us to create a
bill that would suit the needs and wants of the people in that state. We needed writing skills to be able to successfully write a bill in the
format that it was supposed to be written in. We also needed writing skills to be able to write a good elevator pitch for lobbying day
that was both informative and persuasive. We needed public performance skills to be able to perform our pitch in front of a lot of
people and try to convince them to support our bill. We also needed performance skills to be able to get up in front of everyone during
debate and say something that’s going to be meaningful and provoke a new thought or idea about the bill we were discussing. This
project falls under this competency as it caused us to have to think about people even outside of our own community. It also
challenged us to have new perspectives about a topic we may not have agreed with before.
I think this project really challenged us to think differently about other ideologies and views than the one we may have. I was
lucky to be a democractic senator as that is that political stance that I take, but a lot of people had to be on a side of the political party
and cater to people with views they didn’t necessarily agree with. I think this challenged us to look at the world differently and try to
relate to people we may not agree with. After learning about bills that I maybe wouldn’t have agreed with myself from people who
were Republicans I found myself actually somewhat agreeing with them as I knew that this bill would help my constituents. I think
this really challenged me to change my perspective and look at other people’s ideas from different parties than mine differently. It
helped teach me that even if they don’t necessarily share the same views as you, bills that are created can be made to help people from
both sides of the party and can relate to people all around the country.
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Student Signature (Print here: Karis Kracke-Bock ) Date

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Teacher Signature Date