But instead of portraying players dressed in padding and helmets, the cards showed politicians. One featured a photo of former President Donald Trump, his fist raised to the sky after an attempted assassination attempt in Butler County. A headshot of his Democratic opponent Vice President Kamala Harris followed, along with pictures of U.S. Senate candidates Bob Casey and David McCormick.
The backs of the cards featured an elephant or donkey to show the candidates' political party or "team." Beside it, a list of the person's political positions on contentious topics such as abortion and immigration, along with a personal biography, would replace what would be hockey statistics.
Luke, a 15-year-old South Fayette freshman, is still a few years away from being able to register to vote. Last week he was one of dozens of freshmen diving into the 2024 election and the heavy issues that go along with it. The lessons, taught by teacher Keven Gregg, focused on the election process and how to find reliable information and sources.
"It's very important because then you do know what's ahead whenever you get the chance to vote and you actually know what's going to happen," Luke said. "When you're the one who gets to vote, you know who the people are, what they stand for and you can vote on what you believe, what you want the country to look like."
The 2024 election has energized civics education across the Pittsburgh region, filling classrooms with lively debates as students take some of their first steps into politics while learning the basics about the election process.
And while each election cycle is different, this year is seemingly unprecedented following the assassination attempt on Trump and Ms. Harris replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. That's on top of a tense political landscape and a continuing struggle to ensure students are proficient in civics and government.
According to the EdWeek Research Center, 30 percent of principals said the idea that civics is too political or controversial was a "challenging" or "very challenging" barrier. That's compared to 19 percent in a 2018 survey. At the same time, 22 percent of eighth graders in 2022 performed at or above proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, similar to results in 2018 and 1998.
But those challenges don't minimize the importance of these lessons, Fran Serenka, an associate professor at Duquesne University's School of Education, said.
"The citizenry of the United States absolutely rests on having knowledgeable, informed people make a choice for their elected officials," Ms. Serenka said.
For decades, civics education has been present in classrooms across the country based on standards set by each state. In Pennsylvania, officials nearly a decade ago created the Standards Aligned System for each subject including social studies, civics and government. And over the years those lessons have expanded to include hands-on work at polling stations, something seen today across the Pittsburgh region including at South Fayette.
The goal, Ms. Serenka said, isn't for teachers to sway students' opinions one way or the other.
"What we want to do as teachers is we want to get a kind and civil discourse going in a classroom so that students understand that not only do they have rights and responsibilities to be citizens, but they have rights and responsibilities to respect other peoples' opinions and the way other people feel about any particular point," Ms. Serenka said.
That idea was present in Mr. Gregg's South Fayette classroom.
Students throughout the day researched both Republican and Democratic candidates for president and for either the House or Senate races. That information was being compiled into political playing cards, fake social media sites or political advertisements acted out and filmed by students to educate the public on this year's candidates.
Afterwards, Mr. Gregg will have students act as political scientists, working with data to try and predict the outcome of the election. On Nov. 5, high schoolers will participate in a mock election with Mr. Gregg's students conducting an exit poll to see if their predictions were correct.
Before those lessons take place, Mr. Gregg said he conducts team building activities to teach students how "to engage with each other honestly and respectfully and intelligently when we get into those hot political waters." He also teaches media literacy and how to find reliable and unbiased sources.
"We live in a country where our entire system is dependent upon voluntary participation and people are less likely to voluntarily participate in things that they don't understand and/or that they don't enjoy or find interesting," Mr. Gregg said.
"So the more we can get kids informed, involved, engaged now, the better off we'll be when they become those adults that we then are depending on to keep the system going in the way that it has for almost 250 years."
At Shaler Area High School, students in English teacher Anne Loudon's AP Language and Composition course were introduced to the 2024 election when they were assigned to watch the presidential debate between Trump and Ms. Harris. Afterwards, students in small groups discussed their thoughts about the debate and declared a winner, although many said neither candidate won because they didn't answer questions or present necessary evidence.
In doing the lesson, which also focused on media literacy, Ms. Loudon said her biggest concern was pre-existing biases her students might already hold.
"I thought, 'Oh my goodness, this is a risk. I hope I don't trigger students,'" Ms. Loudon said. "But really... they didn't have strong opinions one way or the other. So it was nice that they came in fresh without a bias and that they were able to really look at what was being said and objectively evaluate it."
A similar lesson played out at Baldwin High School last week when Peter Adams, senior vice president of research and design at the News Literacy Project — a Washington, D.C. -based organization that develops and teaches news literacy in K-12 education — taught students how to spot media that was developed by artificial intelligence or that had been altered to create fake headlines to hurt a particular candidate.
Fake images of Taylor Swift seeming to support Trump even though the singer endorsed Ms. Harris flashed on the screen. The now iconic photo of Trump with his fist in the air during the Butler rally followed. But his hand had been edited to have six fingers, an attempt by someone to make the photo appear fake.
"They spend more time on their phones than doing anything else so why not," Adam Foote, the social studies teacher who organized the media literacy event, said. "We teach kids how to drive, we teach them how to read, how to write. Why not teach them how to be as literate as possible when it comes to their phones?"
Baldwin- Whitehall seniors Regan Eckert and Alex Funk, both 17, after the presentation said AI is prominent in articles and on TikTok.
"You really have to be able to look out for this stuff because as AI and technology gets more and more advanced, it's getting so much harder to detect what's real, what's fake, what's been changed," Alex said. "Having this education, knowing what to look out for, is really important.
At South Fayette, students had not yet formed opinions about particular candidates. But they knew the lessons were helping to prepare them for when they were old enough to vote.
"It lets us make an opinion," 14-year-old Ananya Soundararajan said. "I know young people generally don't vote... because they're less educated on issues. We're able to make those opinions now so when we're 18 and can vote we know what's important to us and what we want to look for in a candidate."
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