Beginning with the first day of the school year, Butler Middle School students learn about their school's “strong commitment to teach, preserve, and protect First Amendment freedoms.” Teachers accomplish this by providing their classes with the central principles of the 3Rs (Rights, Responsibilities, Respect) project, a statewide initiative in Utah and California that prepares educators to teach about religious liberty and religion in ways that are constitutionally permissible and educationally sound.

The result of this work? A school community with a shared understanding of civic duty, and classrooms with a conflict management tool in place that the kids themselves can utilize and regulate.

Students at BMS begin this process by developing and voting on a class code at the start of the school year. “What they discover,” said Martha Ball, a lifelong educator and the Utah Coordinator for the 3Rs project, “is that everyone is interested in one central principle: respect. Once that is established, I show them that our list of rules means nothing unless we understand the responsibility we each have to guard those rights for one another.”

To strengthen its emphasis on the 3Rs, BMS created the Roger Williams Award, given annually to someone within the school community who exemplifies a commitment to civic responsibility. And as a First Amendment project school, Butler hopes to create a student senate. As a first step in that direction, the school assembled a diverse committee of community stakeholders to decide how the senate should operate.

“What we teach our students about all day,” said Ball, “is how societies are formed and what people have historically held to be most important. But our students also need to understand what it means to live in a democracy, and what our ideals look like and feel like when they are applied throughout a community.

“After all, if our children aren't taught in schools how to exercise these rights with responsibility, then who will teach them, and where will they learn this valuable lesson?”