By Carly Shaheen, Staff Writer — The election has made this year an interesting period for politics. The candidates have been portrayed as unorthodox in the way of representing their political parties, which makes integrating their policies into the classroom that much more difficult.

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton brought “facts” to the table. Then comes Republican nominee and President Elect, Donald Trump, continually flipping that table over.

“Many students were passionate about our presidential election and it was interesting to hear everyone’s viewpoints. We had lively discussions on a daily basis and students were always asking questions and keeping up with the news,” AP Government teacher Ryan Foltz said.

This election has taught many that the “important people” (the electoral college), do not necessarily correlate political experience with what’s best for this country. Even when the media views the candidates as a “liar” and a “sexist”, the teachers remained confident with what the students can learn from such a unique and interesting election.

“I was surprised at how interested the students were across the boards,” Government teacher Matthew Cribs said.

Bernie Sanders is a common answer for why students were interested. Bernie Sanders spoke a lot about issues that are important to the younger generation, like education and the legal use of marijuana. This has drawn the youth in, it was something they felt affected by directly. As the campaigns came to a close, Clinton and Trump’s history also made the the american people interested. Scandal after scandal, the younger generation, even students who weren’t eligible to vote, had a lot to say.

“I think Bernie Sanders did a lot to get kids interested in politics even though he was not a candidate in the fall,” Cribbs said.

Students not only spoke about the election in class discussion, but did assignments involving it too.

“We had current events weekly where students incorporated the election into our lesson. Students were also able to watch the presidential debates and we discussed these in great length in class. Finally, we had eight students watch the vice-presidential debate with journalists from the Repository and the students and GlenOak got some positive publicity in the newspaper the next day,” Foltz said.

Whether it was easy or not to integrate the election into the classroom, there is a lot for the students to discuss now.

“Hillary for prison, team Trump, build that wall” Cribbs said.

[Updated Aug. 20, 2017: This article has been reformatted for consistency.]