Who Represents Me? Guided Investigation and Comparative Analysis of Your State Legislative Representatives Job Performance
Required Materials and Resources
Assignment Overview:
Investigate who represents you in the State of Texas’s Legislator. The link above will take you directly to the Texas search engine: Who Represents Me? Input your personal information to search for information and data about your districts and various elected officials serving as your representative in various state positions.
Data Retrieval
Start with the My Representative Link to find the name of the Texas state representative currently elected and serving your district for the offices of
- State of Texas House Representative
- State of Texas Senate Representative
- Board of Education Representative
Recording Required Information
You will need to do independent investigative research in order to find some of the information you will need. Research and investigate each of your 3 independent representatives. The items below are required. You must provide a record to show me evidence that you have researched and collected information for each representative. This will not count towards your minimum page length requirement, but will scored and count towards the grade you receive for the assignment overall.
Information does not need to be recorded in a formal written manner. For example, don’t waste time with complete sentences when recording the information. Focus more on organizing the information a way that is best suited to your learning style and preferences. Focus on collective organization of what you find, as you come across it. For example, maybe focus on sorting information based on similarities and differences that can be observed in relation to comparing and contrasting each individual elected representative.
- Name
- Partisanship (political party affiliation)
- Tenure(total number of years in office)
- Age
- Race
- Career/profession/employment (what to do they do to earn income)
- Political Service (i.e. achievements or failures)
- Religion
- Educational Attainment (highest earned degree)
- Gender
- Marital Status
- District Number
- Leadership position (if applicable)
- Notable and current press releases
- Contact Information
- Services
- If a newsletter subscription offer to sign up was available and whether or not you decided to fill it out or ignore it.
- Social Media Accounts and username to follow: Did you follow any of the accounts that they had listed as active social media accounts?
THINKING ABOUT IT…..TEACHER’S NOTE– it will seem like information overload because you are collecting and recording the same information times 3, for each representative. The most efficient way apply to incorporate information is by drawing collective comparisons in similarities and differences in data results. You have the freedom to be creative. I have had students use charts and organization would be to do the research first. Gather the information required for each of the 3 elected representatives you are being asked to investigate and evaluate.
Additional information you find important, interesting and valuable in addition to the required information items may be included and utilized, at your discretion.
Suggested Resources
- Texas Legislature- Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) overview (Links to an external site.)
- Redistricting by Texas (Links to an external site.)
- LegiScan Texas (Links to an external site.)
- Texas State Directory (Links to an external site.)-For over 80 years Texas State Directory Press has been the premier source for information on state, county and city officials and staff in Texas. Through our authoritative print handbooks (Links to an external site.) and guides (Links to an external site.), online directory (Links to an external site.), and downloadable mail lists (Links to an external site.) we connect you to Texas Government
Examples in Application
Apply the information collectively to describe and discuss comparisons and contrasts between similarities and differences. Don’t be afraid just state what you observe. Your interpretation is not right or wrong so long the information it is based is included for me to access, review and verify. Don’t be afraid to be basic. Look at what is in front of your face. Representative’s identity seems obvious, but if you haven’t previously been engaged and aware of these individuals then what now appears “obvious” would have been impossible to recognize.
- Examples of statement observations
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If all 168 women who have ever been elected to the Texas Legislature were still alive today they would be unable to fill all 181 seats in the TX Leg
- Older representatives are more likely to introduce bills that address issues important to seniors
- Women’ legislator’s numbers are growing, but as of present remain outnumbered with just 42 seats in the House and Senate are currently held by women.
- The dearth of female legislators is most notable among the Republican ranks
Prompts Now you need the Data and Information you collected and wrote down for each of the required bulleted items at the start of this activity. Use the information in your response and critical evaluation of your representative and their job performance in your discussion. Incorporate the data and information into your writing, with application to show evidence and support for evaluating your rep’s job performance. Select one prompt from those listed below to write your reflection about.
- .Social Media is a central tool in any current political campaign. Social networking sites have also emerged as a source of news and information, and as a public platform for political debate, discussion, and of political discord. How do students view regulating political advertising on social media? It may be helpful to reference Facebook’s recent statement that posting political ads that include false information is a 1st Amendment right, compared to Twitter’s decision to ban political ads altogether.
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- Demographic data and information you gathered is beneficial to this prompt. Identify demographic similarities and differences between you and the house representative currently serving as your house rep. Select at least 3 demographic item’s information to compare and contrast examples between yourself and your representative. Discuss your choice in the data provided for the 5 specific bulleted items you selected. What compelled you to choose this data as the examples used to comparing and contrasting personal connection to your representative? Discuss the similarities and differences between yourself and your representatives with specific application of the data. Provide a demographic diagnostic of your representative’s data to explain what you learned about alignment between you and your legislative house rep. How has this shaped what you know, knew, didn’t know, or thought you knew about your understanding influences that shape your legislators ability to represent, lead and make decision on your behalf?
- Texas Government Policy Infographic
- Objective: Visualize the impact of a specific Texas government policy.
- Activity: Create an infographic using tools like Canva or Piktochart to illustrate the impact of a particular policy (e.g., education reform, healthcare changes). Highlight key data points, outcomes, and future implications.
- Submission: Share the infographic and write a brief explanation (1-2 pages) of your design choices and the information presented.