CiViX · For educators
CiViX for educators
Most civics lessons describe how government works. CiViX lets students do it: start from an issue they care about, find the real bill moving in their city, state or Congress, check how different sources cover it, and draft a message to the official who can act.
- Free, with no student accounts. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to roster.
- Nonpartisan. Students choose their own issues and positions; CiViX never suggests one.
- Works in any browser, including school Chromebooks, plus an iPhone app.
- For ages 13 and up. Built first for college and university courses; works for high school classes led by a teacher.
Try it yourself first →
Where it fits your course
How a bill becomes lawStudents see real bills with their real status, like "in committee," instead of a diagram.
FederalismEvery issue is matched at the city, state and federal level, so students see which level actually acts on what they care about.
Media literacyDIG compares how different news sources cover a topic and marks specific claims as accurate, misleading or false, with links to the evidence.
Civil discourseDEBATE lays out the strongest points on each side of an issue, for discussion and debate units.
Informed actionStudents draft a call or email to their actual representatives, in their own words. Sending is optional and always their choice.
Civic vocabularyShort "civics moments" explain terms like quorum, veto and filibuster as they come up.
The lesson below follows the inquiry arc of the C3 Framework for social studies: develop a question, apply civics concepts, evaluate sources, and take informed action. It also works as a starting point for the applied civics project in AP U.S. Government and Politics.
Lesson: From headline to bill
One class period · about 50 minutes
Students will connect an issue they care about to a real bill, explain where that bill stands and which level of government is acting, compare how two sources cover it, and draft a message to the right official.
Before class: spend ten minutes going through the steps yourself on mycivix.com. When students are asked for a ZIP code, have them use the school's ZIP, so no one enters a home address.
- Pick an issue5 min
Each student writes down one issue they care about, in a sentence of their own.
- Build a manifesto10 min
Open mycivix.com and swipe through the headlines, keeping what matters to them. They add their own issue in "Anything else on your mind?" CiViX keeps their words.
- Find the bill10 min
On Take Action, students pick one bill from their top three and note its level (city, state or federal) and its status. Ask: what has to happen next for it to become law?
- Check the coverage10 min
Tap Send to DIG. Students compare how two sources cover the topic and find one claim marked accurate, misleading or false. What evidence decided it?
- Draft, don't send10 min
Tap Take action now to get a drafted call script or email. Students rewrite it in their own voice, with one personal reason the issue matters. Whether to send it later is up to them.
- Debrief5 min
Exit question: which level of government turned out to matter most for your issue, and did that surprise you?
Extensions
- Debate day: pair students with different positions on the same issue and use DEBATE's points for each side.
- Follow a bill: students watch their bill on Take Action for a unit and report each time it moves.
- Local government: where city council agendas are available, compare a city item with a state bill on the same topic.
Keeping it nonpartisan
CiViX takes no side. Students choose which issues matter and where they stand; nothing in the lesson asks them to share their positions with the class. DIG and DEBATE are built to show more than one perspective. Grade the process (the bill found, the sources compared, the quality of the draft), never the position.
If your state or district limits course credit for advocacy, use CiViX for inquiry and media literacy and leave out the action step. Every step before "Draft, don't send" stands on its own.
About sending messages
- Drafting is the classroom activity. Sending is each student's own decision, made outside class.
- Avoid identical messages. Legislative offices give more weight to personal messages than to copies. Thirty matching emails read as spam.
- CiViX never sends anything itself. For state legislators, "Open in your mail app" opens the student's own email with the address, subject and draft filled in; the student sends it from their own account. On a Chromebook with web mail, "Copy email" and the legislator's address work the same way.
- Members of Congress don't publish email addresses. CiViX drafts the message and links the official's own contact form.
Privacy, for administrators
- No accounts, no rosters, no student records. CiViX never asks for a student's name to use it.
- The manifesto stays on the device, in the browser's storage. On shared Chromebooks, have students tap "Start over from scratch" on their manifesto page at the end of class, or clear the browser's site data.
- What leaves the device: the ZIP code, to look up representatives and bills from public data sources; and the text each AI feature needs (for example, the topic being checked), sent to Anthropic's Claude, which does not train on it.
- No ads, no analytics trackers, no tracking cookies. Never sold, never shared.
- Skip two optional features in class: Send to CiViX, which keeps what's sent on our server until the student deletes it, and alerts, which register the device for notifications.
- Emails to legislators go from the student's own email account, never through CiViX. A name and mailing address for the signature are optional and stay on the device.
- Not for children under 13.
Pilot it with us
CiViX is new, and we want educators to shape it. If you try this lesson, we want to hear what worked, what confused students, and what you'd change. Contact details for educators will be posted here shortly.
CiViX 101: civics, explained →