Iowa seems as far from Baltimore as the moon. First, there’s the physical difference: it’s nearly 1,000 miles between Charm City and Waterloo, with much colder temperatures and a decidedly flat landscape. And then there are the differences in the political process.

I’m in Waterloo with five teenagers (including my daughter), two enthusiastic high school teachers and one volunteer I’ve never met. They’re campaigning for the city’s former mayor and Maryland’s former governor, Martin O’Malley, in Iowa’s much-heralded caucus. (I’m chaperoning.) The kids’ humanities teacher, J.D. Merrill coordinated the whole affair. A big O’Malley supporter, he’s also engaged to O’Malley’s daughter, Grace. Merrill is a tireless campaigner — and a role model to kids who might otherwise fall into the traditional millennial stereotype as entitled slackers.

We left Baltimore on Saturday morning, January 30. The week before, we were pummeled with 30-inches of snow — an event that crippled the city and shut school down for the entire week. I drove four of the kids to the airport — Max Janes, Carly Redett, Mazzy Redett and my daughter, Zoe Foringer-Laing. We met the fifth student, Gabe Samuels, and Katherine Tomscha — a Spanish teacher at Baltimore City College High School, where the kids are students — at the airport.

Mazzy (short for Maslin) and Carly are identical twins. They’ve been Zoe’s best buddies since Kindergarten. Max met the three of them at their public middle school. They all met Gabe when they began at Baltimore City College High School, one of the elite public high schools in the city. O’Malley was their mayor and then governor. They’ve been campaigning for him in Baltimore since late fall. Now, they’re headed for the biggest political match up in the country.

In the Baltimore-Washington International Airport Express Parking lot, we pass a car with a bumper sticker that says: Democracy is not a Spectator Sport. These kids are about to get a crash course in that theory. And they’re not even old enough to vote.

By 6:30 p.m., we’re at the O’Malley Headquarters in Waterloo. After two flights and landing in Des Moines, we rented two cars and drove one hour north and one hour east to get to Waterloo. I’m dragging, but the kids are still ready to roll. This is a good thing, because Mr. Merrill is has work for them to do.

O’Malley headquarters is like the campaign headquarters I’ve seen on television and in movies, minus the individual desks given to volunteers making calls. There’s industrial carpeting, folding tables and chairs, and boxes of 8-and-a-half-by-11 brown envelopes stuffed with canvassing maps, lists of addresses and O’Malley hang tags.

Tonight is all about phone calls. Merrill explains that they’re legally allowed to contact voters from 9:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. The kids have just about two hours to make as many phone calls as possible, using their own smart phones. They log in to an automatic dialing program, which scours an O’Malley database and pushes calls through to volunteer phone bankers. The only signal that a call has connected is a subtle ping. There’s no time to fool around.

Before the calling starts, Merrill gives the group a run-down of where things stand at the moment. He explains the caucus process, describing how, on Monday night, Dem voters will gather by precinct and choose one of four corners of the room, one for each of the candidates, plus a spot for the undecided. Precinct captains will then lobby for their candidates, giving voters a chance to change (or make up) their minds. After “realignment,” delegate votes for each viable candidate are tallied.

“The real push here is viability,” Merrill explains. If O’Malley doesn’t have at least 15 percent of the voters in his corner, he won’t win a delegate. In that case, the O’Malley supporters will either go down as undecided or choose between the Senator and the Secretary.

“If you get someone on the phone who is a Clinton or Sanders supporter, ask them to throw their support to O’Malley to make him viable,” Merrill explains. The kids hardly look like they’re listening, but when they get on the phone, that’s what they do.

Gabe is a natural. When he hears the ping, he quickly launches into a liquid-smooth pitch. “Hello, I’m Gabe, a volunteer with the O’Malley campaign. Are you planning to caucus tomorrow night?” The caller is interested in the last-place Democratic candidate and asks when he can see the Governor in person. “Hold on, let me check,” Gabe says.

It’s tough to talk on the phone with a mouth full of metal, and four of the five teen volunteers have braces. They rattle off introductions and questions, reciting a script or modifying the message.

“You guys can write your own scripts,” Merrill says to the room. There’s a remarkable trust in that statement, the sign of a campaigner who knows he’s got the right people — smart and dedicated — on his team. Mazzy hunkers down over her computer screen; typing out the words she’ll say when she finally gets someone on the line.

Meanwhile, Jenny Hope, another volunteer from Baltimore, is burning up the phones. With the calls connecting slowly — the campaign has hundreds of calls being placed at any moment, giving the automatic system a little trouble — she reports in that she’s convinced three people to caucus for O’Malley. The kids are still having difficulty reaching any voters, but at 8:30 p.m. the connections pick up.