People’s Pie is a game from the icivics website. In this game I get to be in charge of the federal budget. I get to choose the taxes I want to take from citizens and the age I want them to retired. Then I start distributing the budget. There is some money that is assigned to go to certain departments, but in addition, there are some proposals that I decide whether to support or reject them. The goal of the game is to be able to balance between the money that is spent supporting proposals and citizens’ satisfaction. For example, if I support all proposals citizens may be happy at the beginning, but as I start borrowing money they will get very upset. On the other hand, if I do not support any proposals, to save money, citizens will also be discontent.

The first step in this game is to set the amount of taxis I will take from corporate tax, payroll tax and income tax. The higher the taxis, the more money I have to support proposals. In addition to setting the taxes I also set the age of retirement. The older is the age of retirement the less is the cost of retirement and Medicare. At this point if citizens are satisfy then I can continue to distribute the budget, otherwise I have to lower the taxis or the age of retirement or both. Once I accept the policy for taxes and retirement I move on to review the proposals. As I accept some proposals and reject others, citizens show whether they are content or discontent with my decisions. If I successfully keep citizens satisfy with my decisions I am allow to continue playing, other wise the game is over. Other thing, if I do not have enough money I can barrow some but it also means that citizens will start to get upset. I believe that the game allows us to set the federal budget for three years; then it tells you your score and the final summary of the budget. 

After I play the game for about three hours or more (not the same day) I was able to understand it and successfully end the year with more than 50% of citizens satisfaction and not deeply in debt. This game along with the other games found in the icivics website are very valuable because they put us in the position of our representatives so we can have a better understanding about what they do. Now, since civic education is not one of the required course in K-12, then it would be amazing if teacher from all courses implement a little bit of civics learning.

In my personal case it is a little difficult to implement People’s Pie in my classroom since I will teach only high school math (Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus). In my classroom I need to go one step forward. My students will not just play the game to gain understanding about how the federal budget works, but also they will obtain data about their improvements. Then they will compare their data with the data of their classmates. I would like to use People’s Pie game in Algebra I, to meet the requirement for Statistics and Probability (Interpreting Categorical and Quantitative Data). My students will record their final scores and the budget summary at the end of each game then after few games put their data together and graph it. Then compare their graphs or histograms with the ones of their classmates and evaluate what they need to do to improve their manage skills to distribute the federal budget.