Troy High teacher selected for 2024 C-SPAN fellowship

TROY — Troy High School teacher Ryan Werenka has been selected for the third year in a row as one of five educators in C-SPAN’s Teacher Fellowship program.

C-SPAN is a private nonprofit public affairs media organization. It offers unfiltered access to government proceedings through TV, radio and social media platforms. Much of its programs is primarily funded by America’s cable and satellite companies. In Troy, C-SPAN is available locally on Comcast.

The 2024 Teacher Fellowship program, sponsored by C-SPAN’s Education Foundation, gives opportunities to middle school and high school educators to develop different ways for classrooms to engage with C-SPAN resources.

“Each year, C-SPAN chooses five teachers from around the country to utilize C-SPAN resources to create lesson plans, review materials, and much more for their education site, C-SPAN Classroom,” Werenka said in an email.

Fellows were selected by a panel of C-SPAN representatives and were evaluated based on their innovative use of C-SPAN programming in their curriculums, their commitment to professional development, and their creative use of technology and social platforms. The educators each receive $1,000 for participating in the program.

“For more than 30 years, C-SPAN’s annual Teacher Fellowship program has afforded us the privilege of working with some of the most exceptional educators in the nation,” Craig McAndrew, the director of education relations, said in a press release. “We are thrilled to collaborate closely with Ryan again this summer, to enhance and expand our digital resources for teachers, students and classrooms across the country.”

Werenka teaches AP U.S. government and politics, and AP comparative government and politics. He has served on the district’s government curriculum team for over 20 years and the district-level curriculum council for the Troy School District for six years. Werenka serves as a teacher adviser for numerous civic education organizations, including the National Constitution Center, Retro Report, PBS NewsHour Classroom, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has served as an AP Reader for the AP U.S. government and politics exam for the last five years, scoring the exams. Werenka is currently working on a Master of Arts in history at Gettysburg College.

“I’ve been a political junkie since the age of 6,” Werenka said. “I’ve always been fascinated by all aspects of  campaigns, elections, getting power and using it to help people.”

Within Werenka’s work as an educator, he has noticed that students have become more civically engaged since the 2016 election as the number of AP government courses is planned to increase. Students may also take an AP comparative government course where they can learn about politics in other countries.

“Students see what’s going on and want to be informed,” Werenka said.

Werenka has also seen that students seem less interested in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

“The apathy for the 2024 election is noticeable,” Werenka said. “The lack of interest is dangerous, and we want kids to know why they should be invested.”

For his own classes as well as other government classes, there has been a bigger push to educate students about civil discourse in order to help students interact with different opinions.

“We have classroom deliberation models for students to help them better understand opinions and engage in civil dialogue,” Werenka said. “It really leans towards teaching kids to be more constructive.”

In terms of Werenka’s work with C-SPAN, during his first two years of working with the organization, he developed numerous practice free response questions to prepare students for the AP U.S.  government and politics exam.

“C-SPAN Classroom actually has more practice Supreme Court Free Response Questions than the College Board provides for students and teachers because of the work that I did for their fellowship,” Werenka said in an email.

Werenka will collaborate with C-SPAN’s Education Relations team to create content for C-SPAN Classroom, which is the networks’ free online resource for teachers, students and the public that provides educators with video-based content, including lesson plans, current events videos, inquiry-based deliberations and more. Through the fellowship, Werenka will partner with C-SPAN to expand the collection of digital resources.

“I’ll be working with C-SPAN throughout the month of July (and throughout the school year) by developing resources for teaching about the 2024 election and developing classroom deliberations activities where students will examine both sides of political issues in a way that will foster civil dialogue,” Werenka said in an email. “My work on the 2024 election will focus on the presidential campaign, along with creating materials for several of the key US Senate races that are taking place this year including the Senate race here in Michigan.”

As part of the Fellowship, Werenka will also be presenting his work and information about the C-SPAN StudentCam competition at the C-SPAN Summer Educator Workshop in August, as well as a session on behalf of C-SPAN and the Council on Foreign Relations at the National Council for Social Studies Conference in Boston this November.

“Congratulations to Ryan Werenka for his commitment to students and being selected to the C-SPAN Teacher Fellowship,” Eric Woody, Oakland County Comcast government and regulatory affairs manager, said in a press release. “Comcast has been a longtime supporter of C-SPAN Classroom because we understand how important it is to get our youth engaged and interested in the political process. We are proud to help provide teachers with the digital tools and resources they need to effectively engage and guide our future leaders.”

Educators can learn more about teacher opportunities with C-SPAN at c-span.org/classroom/opportunities/.