Teaching children about the inner workings of American government can be a mighty hassle, particularly as the duller aspects of our three-branch system have a tendency to numb the mind of even the most attentive among us..adult or not.
But a group of fifth graders in Washington State were able to take their civic lesson to the next level, affecting change in the real world and having a hoot while they were at it.
As a result of a rather unique project, a class of fifth graders in Washington State successfully lobbied their local government to declare their county a “Sasquatch protection and refuge area.” The crytpozoological civics lesson was reportedly the work of students at Lincoln Elementary School in the city of Holquiam. According to their teacher, Andrea Andrews, the youngsters were initially tasked with researching the famed cryptid and determining “if Bigfoot was real and hadn’t been discovered yet, or that it was just a big bear and people had misidentified it.” This sparked something of a healthy debate within the class with opinions on the issue largely being split down the middle.
The project was a major and surprising success.