Written by Kristen Fontaine, an attorney at Barket Epstein Kearon Aldea & LoTurco, LLP & former GC Democracy Coach

On the first day of my ninth-grade government class, I failed a civics test.

I was a straight-A student, yet I knew absolutely nothing about the government or how it works. My first instinct was to drop the class as a form of retaliation. Luckily for me, my teenage ego kept me from giving up — a decision that ended up changing the entire course of my life.

My class competed in the We The People competition that same year, a simulated congressional hearing program run by the Center for Civic Education. Over several months, I watched myself transform from being completely indifferent to anything government-related to fiercely debating current political issues with my classmates and defending my positions to state and national judges. By the end of the school year, I realized that I wanted to pursue a career in law. At the same time, I had also come to appreciate the power of civics education.

If civics education could affect me so significantly, I knew it could affect others just as much, if not more. 

I knew I wanted to continue my involvement in civic education, but I wasn’t sure how until a friend told me about Generation Citizen. At the time, Generation Citizen was structured so that college students served as “democracy coaches” and taught the GC civics curriculum in schools. However, Stonehill College did not have a GC chapter on campus, nor were there any schools in our area participating in the program. During the summer before my second year at Stonehill, I connected with GC’s New England team, and by the end of the following semester, I established a GC chapter at my college, with seven Stonehill students teaching civics at the nearby Brockton High School.

In addition to serving as the chapter’s Executive Director, I also had the pleasure of teaching one of the civics classes. My class was made up of over thirty students, and at eight o’clock on a Monday morning, they would’ve rather been anywhere else. In that sense, the students in my class reminded me of myself on that first day of ninth-grade government class. However, over the course of a few weeks, my students underwent a similar transformation. Rolled eyes and avoidant bathroom trips were replaced by timid participation and louder advocacy, and they eventually began to open up about the issues in their community that affected them the most.

In my class, youth homelessness was a leading issue and one that many of my students faced. Using GC’s Advocacy Hourglass, they crafted a campaign to advocate for their mayor to allocate money to a homeless youth shelter. Five of my students presented their project at Civics Day, which is Generation Citizen’s flagship event for students to connect with other students in their state or city as well as with local elected officials. That day at the Massachusetts State House, I was overcome with pride when my students won GC’s grassroots change award in recognition of their hard work.

Generation Citizen allowed my students to gain confidence beyond what they thought possible, all while making their voices heard in their local government for the first time.

After graduating from law school and moving to New York City, I yearned for a way to get back to supporting civics education, and I knew that returning to Generation Citizen and volunteering to be a Community Advisor at Civics Day was exactly where to start. Since GC stepped away from their “democracy coach” model, the Community Advisor role allows people from all walks of life to come together and support GC students as they share their community-based civics projects at Civics Day. Community Advisors listen intently to their presentations and even help select the projects and groups that win awards at the end of the event. Several Community Advisors have also gone on to provide GC students with opportunities like internships, jobs, and mentorship, deepening their civic engagement.

Serving as an NYC Community Advisor for the past two years, while also thinking back on my experience in Massachusetts, has allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the differences and similarities between communities.  Because every community is different, the issues plaguing the communities are different too. Even for issues like youth homelessness or school lunches — issues that persist no matter the setting — the solutions to those issues differ based on the systems in place for each area. 

And this is why, more than anything, local community-based civics is crucial.

My work with Generation Citizen also led me to join the New York City Bar Association’s Civic Education Committee in Spring 2023. One of the many projects I’m involved in with the committee is the Civics Corps, which connects lawyers with opportunities to volunteer with several civic education programs throughout the city, including Generation Citizen.

I speak about my experience with GC every chance I get, especially highlighting how it empowers students to proudly share their opinions in a society that often ignores what they have to say. Among all of the other civic education work I do throughout the year, Generation Citizen’s Civics Day always stands out as a powerful reminder of why this work is so important.