A core group of students at Irving Middle School participated in a lesson called "The River" from CityYouth: Today's Communities. In this small group activity, students are provided a short reading about a community along the banks of a hypothetical river.

Each of the groups receives a different story set in a particular historical era. Each group role plays a meeting (tribal council, town meeting, city council, County Board) where options for addressing their problem are discussed and prioritized. The group must decide which option is best, and then create a drawing that illustrates the era, the problem they faced, and how they solved it.

The students are not aware that the other groups are working on different stories set in different eras, and when each group reports, the drawings come together as a mural of a river system over time. Through guided discussion of each group's drawing and rationale behind its decision, students made connections between the past and present, were introduced to the concept of public policy, and also used critical thinking skills and discussed the responsibilities of active citizenship.

The next activity in CityYouth provides an opportunity for students to participate in a service-learning project with the theme of "Environment." The Irving students decided that they were concerned about the amount of cans, bottles, and other recyclable items that filled the trash cans around campus. They also started thinking about things their own families could be doing to conserve water and recycle.

Working with local agencies and non-profits, the students created brochures that included conservation facts, tips, and suggestions for home and for school. They realized a need to provide the brochures going home in Spanish, so bilingual students in the classes formed a group to translate the brochure in to Spanish.

Students made oral presentations to different classes and distributed the brochures to the entire student body and throughout the community.