Authentic as it gets

Well today my small Constitutional Law class and I were 20 people away from a life changing experience and were 'forced' to settle for a great experience.

Let me set the scene..

In March I took my students to see oral arguments for a Supreme Court case (Abuelhawa v United States).  We didn't get to see the whole case being heard but we did catch the last 20 minutes and it was a lot of fun.  The case was about whether or not someone should be charged with a felony for minor possession of a narcotic because they used a cell phone to facilitate it.  What I noticed when we left was that even though we had gone through the background of the case, the students had a really hard time understanding what was going on when we were in the courtroom.

Taking this into consideration, and after reading an article in the Washington Post about a school in Virginia that did mock Supreme Court cases, I decided it would be fun to take an upcoming case from the Supreme Court and have the students be the lawyers and do all the leg work.  So first I gave students brief summaries of the cases and then we picked one that interested them.  The students picked the case Safford Unified School District v. Redding.  This case was about a student who was strip searched when students were looking for illicit prescription drugs (in this case 400 mg prescription ibuprofen).  The student says her Fourth Amendment rights were violated and she was traumatized by the experience, developed ulcers and had to leave the school.  The school district basically says it was protecting their students and they need to maintain the right to do so.  Once they had picked the case they were assigned to teams representing the two sides.

The first thing the students had to do was submit legal briefs.  They worked together and performed research using only primary sources (the same sources that were used in the case) reading and citing previous legal decisions on the case (local, appellate and en banc), relevant Supreme Court decisions, and the sworn statements used in the case.  While the final briefs were far shorter than the real thing, the students used legal terminology and made multiple outlines, drafts, and numerous revisions to come to their final product and gained experience using legal evidence and making strong arguments based solely on the law and interpretation of the law.

The students then had to present 'Oral Arguments'.  First the students had to write a persuasive speech representing their side.  This forced them to pick only the strongest arguments for their side and work on their persuasive writing and speaking skills.  Then they had to present the speech in front of their peers.

The next step was to simulate what it would be like to be in front of the Supreme Court Justices (who get to interrupt you at any time and interrogate you mercilessly).  Because our class is too small to have a set of Justices, I decided to arrange it as a debate, where they would get to question each other and force the other side to answer potentially damaging questions.

The culmination of this project was for us to go to the Supreme Court and hear the Oral Arguments for the very case we had been studying ourselves.  The students picked a very popular case, and one that has gotten a reasonable amount of press (far more than the other case we attended though certainly not a landmark case).  I decided we had to arrive at the Court early because seating is very limited and it is first come, first serve.  I figured that if I arrived by 5:30 then my students arrived by 6:30 and we would be fine.


I arrived at the Court around 5:35 and to my dismay saw a huge group of people already waiting.  I ended up being about the 70th person in line.  My students arrived and were able to join me (with a little bickering behind me) and we patiently waited in the fairly cool/cold weather to see if we were going to get in.  I was not very hopeful but my students jokingly 'kept the faith'.  After lots of time in line, we received the final 'placeholder' issued by the police at #75.  We kept waiting since we only got one for the six of us.  At one point we were offered $100 for the placeholder (which in retrospect my students said we should have taken haha) by a supposed friend of one of the attorneys trying the case.  Apparently the parents of one of the attorneys trying the case was actually behind us in line as well, clearly no special privileges were given to anyone.


In the end we were about 20 people away from getting a seat for the whole trial (and when there are only about 200 seats total 20 is a lot).  I probably would have needed to get there at least an hour earlier and the students would have had to have been there with me to avoid a riot.  So we didn't really have a shot since the fifth student arrived around 7 AM.

We then moved directly to the 5 minute rotation line and were the first group to go inside.  We went in, put our things in the little lockers, heard 5 minutes of the case, and were then led out.  While we only got to hear a tiny portion of the case my students did not come across as very disappointed and were animatedly talking all about the case as we left.  I can only imagine what it would've been like for us to hear the whole thing if 5 minutes got them going.

Here are the highlights of what we did get to witness:

• Safford Unified School District was presenting and was talking about how the school district had to be able to protect their students from illegally using prescription medications and that there had been a history of students getting sick and abusing these drugs.
  
• One of my students who represented Safford in our class was very excited that she heard the very argument she used in her paper used by the lawyer
• Ruth Bater Ginsburg began to pull Safford's case apart
  
• Another student who represented Redding was very excited that the Justices seemed to be very harsh on the Safford lawyer

In the end, while we did not quite get the potentially life changing experience that we wished we could have gotten, I think that we ended successfully.

Case and point: 3 out of 5 students are now saying that they are seriously thinking about law school (when before none of them had any interest).

Mission Affirmed

A student randomly came up to me in the hall who hasn't had me as a teacher all this year and told me that she thinks I am one of the best teachers in the school on the grounds that she always sees me standing and walking around the room, that I always seem to be teaching, and that she remembers she learned a lot in my class last year. 

While this was a very kind sentiment there is the dark flipside which is: if that is all it takes to be the best teacher in the school, then what aren't the other teachers doing?!  I mean after she told me that she basically said "you aren't like those other teachers who always sit behind their desks and give out work in the first 5 minutes" and then pointed at a certain english teacher's classroom. 

This just reaffirms the reason I have to talk to Ms. Rhee and try and work something out here.  Our teachers are flat out lazy, and it is killing this school and making it a place that students don't want to be in.  If I am the 'best' teacher (and while I think I do a good job and try pretty hard there is no way I should be considered a 'best,' especially since she had me last year when I was even worse than this year) that says way more about the other teachers then it does about me.  So thank you my dear, you have convinced me that my cause is righteous and I will fight for you until I can't fight any more. 

(Now what I have to do is see if I can get some students to fight for themselves.  Admittedly it is hard when one does not know how to change people who have such authority.)

Financial Anti-Literacy

On the 14th and 15th my director, in her illustrious wisdom, decided that we should have a financial literacy training for the whole school during 1st and 2nd period the week before the DC-CAS.  Now I'm not all about teaching to the test, but I am against wasting time (especially before the all powerful test).  This is time we could have at least spent practicing the math, reading and writing skills necessary for this test.  But no, instead we get a super-dumbed down (to the point of being wrong) series of 'lessons' on financial literacy provided by the FDIC. 

I will be the first to agree that financial literacy is extremely important, so if these lessons had taught some of the more important and complex issues with finance that would have been great.  But instead, the kids are given the basics, and this being a school that focuses on the Business side of things, the students (at least the ones in my class) knew basically all of it.  Now I could maybe even look over that fact if there hadn't been a parade of extremely bad advice to go along with the very very basic information. 

I have provided a few choice examples from this morning below:

• 9:15 - Carryout EVERY DAY is apparently a great way to save money.  Who knew?  Never mind the cost to your own bank account, the environment and your health.  Who knew long term costs don't actually affect you (and that doesn't negate the fact that it is also a short term cost)?
  
• 9:45 - since when is POPEYE'S a wise financial decision?
• 10:22 - Keep it legal people.  Keep it legal.
• 10:29 - Glossary = cheating
• 10:38 - Don't trust the internet.  Especially paying bills and online banking.
• 10:48 - 2nd time we have brought up that you shouldn't bring a baby in when you ask for a loan.  I mean ok, but twice?  Really, it needed saying twice?

 And there you have it, 4 hours of precious class time wasted.

Guilty as charged

On Friday afternoon the entire school had a meeting to discuss the shockingly low attendance rate on Friday and why it is occurring.

Our entire school has a definite cycle where on a half-day students don't bother coming to school. This is for a variety of reasons, but the main one is probably because they don't think we will be doing anything of use on the half-day. Now unfortunately they are largely right. Classes don't do much of value on the half-day.

The question is: why aren't teachers doing more on half days? The answer: because students aren't showing up, and if you do too much that day you will probably just have to re-teach it to the class when they show up the next class day. So we have this cycle of low expectations that has to be broken, and the students aren't going to be (and shouldn't have to be) the first ones to break it.

Thinking about this I realized I am guilty of fulfilling this low-expectations of turn-out on the recordkeeping day this year. I planned a survey and work period for projects into my curriculum because I knew many students wouldn't show up. Therefore students still got credit for coming, but we didn't cover any new material.

This compromise is probably too large, and I will do better to make half-days more essential for the class to try and force them to come. But here's the dilemma: If I do that, and then the rest of the classes are a waste of time, then it will really just further reinforce the idea that it is useless to come to school on those days. Therefore we really need to come together as a staff and make this happen.

Now I'm going to go die on the floor laughing at the idea that a bunch of teachers who can barely muster up the energy to show up to work on time will actually teach a real lesson on a half-day. Man this staff is making me pessimistic. Good thing I have a meeting w/Ms. Rhee at the end of this month to try and change them by force. If bottom up won't work, then top-down it is!

Fires

Our school is known for fires being set by students.  Today we had our first one of the school year.  Not too bad all things considered.  But now the building smells like smoke.

And it's off

I just sent an email to Michelle Rhee requesting a meeting with her to discuss the future of the Academy.

I am very nervous, but also excited that I am actually trying to be proactive instead of just running from my problems by applying to another school.

While I don't know exactly what she can do, at least I am going to try to fix things before I head for the hills.

UPDATE (8:40 AM): "Sure thing, Angie pls schedule." And with that... we begin.