Why I do this
My students are working adults, parents, veterans, and first-generation college students. Government already shapes their lives every single day — they deserve a course that treats them like citizens, not test-takers.
On set, filming GOVT 2305 · Take 1
I teach GOVT 2305 and 2306 — Federal and Texas Government — in Fort Worth, where I grew tired of watching capable, busy people disengage from courses built on memorization and Scantrons. So I started replacing exams with real civic action: attending public meetings, contacting representatives, mapping public services, showing up.
Everything I build is shared as a free, open educational resource. If you're an instructor, take it, adapt it, and make it yours. If you're a student, these tools were built for you first.
“Government is a place where people can come together to solve problems.”
— Stephanie Stewart, my mom
She means it, too. In November 1984 — nine months pregnant with me, days before I was born — she stood in line for hours to cast her vote. Reagan won anyway, to her lasting disgust. She carried me to the polls before I could walk there myself, and years later she stood right beside me for my first legal vote.
She taught me that long before any professor did — and she lives it: hardworking, empathetic, civic-minded. Everything on this page is built in her honor.
What showing up looks like
Lightly edited excerpts from real CAP submissions and student messages, shared with permission.
“Yesterday I voted in a local election for the first time in my 28 years as a voter. I sat down with my daughter and researched all seventeen propositions and every candidate on my ballot. This morning I was reading up on how runoff elections work. All of this is a result of your class — and specifically the CAP activities. If you ever wonder whether you’re making a difference: you are.”
“Now I am invested”
A student sat in the City Hall parking lot before her first Fort Worth work session, watching police cars arrive and wondering what she’d signed up for. A councilmember walked her in. Two hours later, she’d seen a $79.5 million tax-abatement pitch, a bond-program debate, and a live lesson in federalism over state funding strings. Her verdict: “I probably would’ve gone my whole life and never made it to a government meeting. Now I am invested.”
Government Meeting Attendance · GOVT 2306The business card
At her first Euless City Council meeting, a nervous student was personally welcomed by the Mayor Pro Tem — who handed her his business card and told her not to hesitate if she ever needed help. She stayed for drainage ordinances and utility-rate hearings, and left with a better definition than the textbook’s: civic engagement isn’t just voting — it’s going to a meeting, listening, and learning.
Government Meeting Attendance · GOVT 2305The first FOIA
Investigating Fort Worth’s billion-dollar Panther Island project, a student filed his first public-records request with the water district, interviewed family about rising water bills, and delivered a lessons-learned report on oversight and transparency that wouldn’t look out of place on a consultant’s letterhead.
Government Investigation · GOVT 2306Built on three convictions
Choice drives motivation
Students engage when they have real autonomy. CAP offers dozens of paths to the same goal, so a night-shift nurse and an 18-year-old gamer can both find activities that fit their lives.
Experience beats memorization
You don't learn government from a Scantron. You learn it by sitting in a council meeting, emailing your representative, and seeing how the machine actually moves.
Good ideas should travel
Everything here is open educational material. The whole point is for other instructors to take it, adapt it, and put it in front of more students than I ever could alone.