Moorestown Friends School senior Ali Sabir is the founder of Civics Week, a student-led curriculum change for civics.
He started it because he felt civics was often taught as something distant – about Washington or history books – rather than something that shapes everyday lives in Moorestown. He wanted to create a way for students to learn civics through a local lens, where lessons on things like gerrymandering, campaign finance or town government connect directly to the community around us.
“Everyone – at all ages – can afford to be more civically involved,” Sabir explained. “There’s always more that you can do and with teaching civics. It should start in the classroom, but it shouldn’t end there. If you look up the definition of civics, one of the main ones – especially when we talk about civic engagement – does not have to do with just being involved in the government in your local town or municipality.
“It means just being involved in your community.”
Sabir’s passion project was personal. His parents instilled the value of civics in both him and his brother from a young age. Since they didn’t have that back home (in Kashmir, India), they wanted to make sure Sabir and his brother didn’t take the value of civics for granted.
Sabir’s involvement in the community is just one way that he expresses gratitude for the inheritance of civic engagement from his mom and dad, he said, and that’s how Civics Week was born.
The program began at Moorestown Friends School and has grown as students who first participated later returned to help teach it, creating a cycle of peer-to-peer learning. Working with other students, Sabir helped adapt the lessons for broader use, which led to the program’s expansion into William Allen Middle School.
Civics Week has recently been approved for the school’s eighth graders and has also been incorporated into educational material for Prepare2Vote, an existing civics-focused nonprofit in South Jersey.
“It is super rewarding,” Sabir said of seeing Civics Week grow. “On a base level, seeing how civics can be taught is super cool but secondly, the idea that there are new ways to teach old ideas … Everyone says – and it’s an old cliche – when one person gets involved, it’s worth it. But if you think about it … that is true.
“One person getting involved, they draw in more people, too.”
