House Fellows: Hanna teacher gets inside look at how Congress governs

Alma I. Ortiz will never forget the week she spent last summer rubbing elbows with the nation's lawmakers in the halls of Congress.

The government and economics teacher from Hanna High School was part of a select group of nine educators from across the country who participated in the House Fellows Program of the U.S. House of Representatives during the last week of July.

"It was pretty much jam-packed from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.," Ortiz said last week. "We were in the Cannon Office Building, and we had a staff badge that gave us unrestricted access to the Capitol, which for a history and government lover is just incredible."

The one-week institute is intended to help government teachers teach the governmental process by giving them hands-on experience in the House and elsewhere in Congress. Each of the 435 U.S. House districts eventually gets to send a representative, but the institute is done in groups of 12. (There were three absences in Ortiz's group.)

Ortiz represented the 27th Congressional District, which stretches from Brownsville to Corpus Christi and is represented by U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, no relation.

"It brings meaning to everything," Ortiz said of attending a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

"I was right behind the presenters, the people testifying."

Another highlight was hearing Rep. Ortiz read her name into The Congressional Record, and getting a plaque of the entry and bound copy of The Congressional Record for that day. Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., also read the group's appearance into the record.

Perhaps the most lasting memory, and most useful from a teaching standpoint, was a visit to the National Archives in which Ortiz had access to and was able to photograph original documents.

She showed a photograph of President Abraham Lincoln's nomination of Ulysses S. Grant to become a lieutenant general in the U.S. Army, the appointment that made Grant the commander of union forces during the Civil War. The document is unusual in that Lincoln signed his full name, not just "Abe" as he often did, Ortiz said.

Among other documents, Ortiz photographed President Ronald Reagan's 1981 nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court.

"To be able to hold in your hands 200-year-old journals of the House and Senate was awesome," Ortiz said.

Other highlights included:

ä Attending Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's "Texas Thursday" coffee.

ä Standing alone in the Capitol Rotunda on the Friday night she was there.

And then there was the experience "of just being on the House floor observing debate, of being able to just move around the Capitol Building with ease."

Ortiz said the fellowship added to her understanding of the legislative process "because now I understand how policy, politics and procedure all affect proposed legislation.

"I'm now able to bring that into my unit of instruction on Congress and the law-making function of it," she said.

The fellowship began with the same three-hour presentation given to incoming House members on their first day in office.

Now Ortiz will produce a lesson plan on what she learned about Congress, which will be entered into a database available to all government teachers nationwide.