On Constitution Day, I won’t just hand out pocket Constitutions. I’ll be in the Dunbar High cafeteria behind a voter registration table with the League of Women Voters. A few steps away, we’ll run a Know Your Rights station. Clipboards, wallet cards, questions. We’ll celebrate a document worth learning — and tell the truth about who it excluded and how we keep widening the “we.”
I teach constitutional law in Washington, D.C., a city that embodies the Constitution’s contradictions. My students can recite the preamble by heart and still ask a question no textbook fully answers: How can Congress overrule our local laws when D.C. has no voting members in Congress? That’s not a hypothetical. It’s their bus route, their block, their family. When the federal government takes over D.C. decision-making, it shows up on their streets and in our conversations.
So this year, Constitution Day launches our inquiry: What does the Constitution promise — and to whom — when it comes to D.C. self-government? We’ll read the text that gives Congress power over the District. We’ll study home rule and the limits built into it. Then we’ll get out of the classroom. My students will interview legal professionals and neighbors, gather stories about what federal control looks like up close, and ask a plain question with a complicated answer: What does consent of the governed mean in a place that doesn’t have a full vote?
Teaching the Whole Story
I teach the whole story because love demands honesty; James Baldwin reminds us that real love of country insists on the right to criticize. We’ll talk about the people it counted but did not protect, the voices it silenced, and the movements and amendments that pushed the circle wider. That’s not “tearing down” the founding — it’s honoring it by refusing to pretend away its omissions. Teenagers know the difference between cheerleading and honesty. They also know when adults trust them with the real work of citizenship.
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The lunchtime tables matter for that reason. Rights become real when young people use them — register to vote, know what the law expects of them, and what they can expect in return. Some students will be eligible to sign up to vote; others will leave with a plan for when they turn 18 and a one-page guide to their basic rights. Everyone will get the same message: Democracy is not a spectator sport.
From Text to Action
In class, we’ll practice what we preach. Students will map how power flows from constitutional text to daily life in D.C. — who decides budgets and criminal codes, who can veto local choices, who is accountable at the ballot box, and who isn’t. They’ll test arguments on all sides: the case for federal authority in the nation’s capital and the case for local dignity and self-government. They are asked to think for themselves — to reason, to analyze evidence, to listen, and to lead.
Here’s what I want them to carry out of Room 389 on Sept. 17: The Constitution belongs to you in all its complexity. You inherit both its promises and its unfinished business. Register if you can. Learn your rights. Ask hard questions about power. And then act on your block, in your school, at the polls, and, yes, in the halls of government that still don’t fully hear D.C.’s voice.
If you’re a lawyer, scholar, or public servant reading this, join us as part of Teach Truth on Constitution Day. Visit a school. Lend your expertise for a student interview on home rule. Help a class wrestle honestly with the Constitution we share. Teaching truth isn’t a threat to the rule of law. It’s how we build the kind of public — thoughtful, informed and brave — our Constitution needs.
Dr. Shelina Warren directs the Eleanor Holmes Norton Law and Public Policy Academy at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., where she teaches constitutional law and leads civic engagement initiatives.