What Does the Vice President of the USA Do? (Ages 11-14)

So what is their job anyway?

We are going to cover the history of the Vice President of the United States, starting with the original 1787 constitutional convention where it was decided the loser of the Presidential race became the VP. Then the inclusion of the Twelfth Amendment which meant that vice presidents were no longer the runners-up in the presidential election, but still had very little officially assigned duties.

We will talk about the official duties as the second-highest officer in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, after the president of the United States, and ranks first in the presidential line of succession. The vice president is also an officer in the legislative branch, as president of the Senate and can be the tie breaking vote.

However, both those duties do not make up a full time job, so what does he do the rest of the time? 

We will discuss what some of the VPs have made the job in to and how the "free time" can actually work in the favor of a strong personality in the Vice President's position.

This class is primarily a discussion based class, I will have a power point presentation to start the class off with the main information. Then we are going to talk about their favorite aspects of what they have done.

This is NOT a political discussion class about the parties and what they talk about or do. I will attempt to keep this out of the party line discussion arena.