FROM ZERO TO 60: BUILDING BELIEF, CAPACITY AND COMMUNITY IN STREET LAW INSTRUCTORS IN ONE WEEKEND
Seán Arthurs, Melinda Cooperman, Jessica Gallagher, Freda Grealy, John Lunney, Rob Marrs & Richard Roe[footnoteRef:2]  [2:  Seán Arthurs was a Clinical Teaching Fellow with the Street Law Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center from 2011-2013 and an adjunct professor with the Clinic in 2014. He has presented, written, and trained on learner centered education with diverse audiences in a variety of contexts around the globe. Melinda Cooperman is an attorney at the Children’s Law Center (CLC) in Washington, D.C., where she represents children in abuse and neglect cases as a guardian ad litem, and works as a consultant in the field of law related education. Prior to joining CLC, Melinda taught at the Street Law Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center and ran the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project at American University’s Washington College of Law. Jessica Gallagher was the 2014-2016 Clinical Teaching Fellow with the Street Law Clinic at GULC.  She earned her J.D. from Lewis & Clark Law School in 2012 and is a member of the North Carolina Bar. Freda Grealy is a solicitor and Head of the Diploma Centre at the Law Society of Ireland. She introduced Street Law to the Law Society in 2013 and leads a number of their Street Law Programmes. John Lunney is a solicitor and course manager at the Diploma Centre of the Law Society of Ireland and also leads their Street Law programme. Rob Marrs is Head of Education at the Law Society of Scotland and leads on implementation of Street Law. Richard L. Roe is Professor of Law and Director of the Georgetown Street Law Program; he has taught Street Law at Georgetown since 1980 and has facilitated a form of this training dozens of times at Georgetown and around the globe.] 

Abstract
Street Law, where law students or lawyers teach about the law in local school, correctional, and community settings, is the fastest growing and most popular type of experiential legal education in the world—and with good reason. The Street Law methodology helps make the law more relevant, more accessible, and more understandable to both participants in the program and lawyers and law students delivering the programming. Despite Street Law’s prevalence and popularity, there is scant guidance for how to best introduce and implement a program, little research support explaining why Street Law works, and even less empirical justification proving that the program works. This paper makes three significant and unique contributions to the emerging field of Street Law scholarship and research. First, we provide an in-depth explanation of the principles and learner-centered practices that make Street Law such a powerful tool for legal education. Second, we ground these principles and practices in a robust body of research, the first such effort in the field. Third, we offer an annotated step-by-step outline of a unique weekend orientation program developed and field-tested by the seminal Georgetown Street Law program and delivered in partnership with the Law Societies of Ireland and Scotland. It is our hope that this paper will offer practitioners both a series of best practices to draw upon and a reason to do so. A second paper, that will shortly follow this one, will share and discuss quantitative and qualitative data evidencing the powerful outcomes that this weekend orientation can effect in participants.[footnoteRef:3] [3:  This paper and the Orientation weekends that continue to inspire and train Irish and Scottish students and lawyers would not be possible without the valuable contributions of numerous dedicated individuals, generations of Street Law students and Fellows, and the committed staff and leadership at the Law Society of Ireland and the Law Society of Scotland. In particular, we would like to acknowledge and appreciate the significant efforts of Charisma Howell, Efrain Marimon, Lee McGoldrick, Heather McKendrick, Sarah Medway, Lyndsey Thomson, and Holly Wonneberger.] 

I. Introduction
Street Law, where law students or lawyers teach about the law in local school, correctional and community settings, is the fastest growing and most popular type of legal clinic in the world.[footnoteRef:4] The reasons behind this growth are myriad. On the one hand, Street Law is an accessible and low cost model that can be employed in almost any setting, with any population, and on any legal subject. Street Law does not require law student participants to follow local practice rules and does not threaten the income or livelihoods of local lawyers. In emphasizing legal education that is experiential in nature, the Street Law model appeals to law schools responding to the legal profession’s demand for lawyers who can contribute quickly and learn on their feet. At the same time, Street Law helps satisfy the voracious desire of lay people to understand their rights and responsibilities in a world full of increasingly complex and obtuse legal systems. Moreover, Street Law uses people’s inherent interest in the law and research-supported, best practices in civic education to teach high cognitive, expressive, academic, social and other skills that enhance people’s effectiveness in legal matters. And Street Law satisfies that demand with a unique pedagogical approach that values the student, her voice, and her background. [4:  Although Street Law began as a legal clinic at Georgetown in 1972, changes in the American Bar Association’s definition of “legal clinic” led to its transformation into an experiential “practicum” at Georgetown starting in Fall 2016. The program operation and methodology described here has not changed.  In many law schools around the world, it functions as clinical legal education. It is also conducted outside of law schools as an experiential or educational program.] 

As interest in the Street Law model has spread across the globe, there is an increased need for Street Law training that equips law students and new lawyers with the tools they need to successfully introduce and support the Street Law model in school, correctional, and community settings. These trainings must be meaningful and substantive for the law students, developed in a collaborative way that embeds skills and knowledge in Street Law practitioners and faculty, and be responsive to the local context where host institutions often face significant time and resource constraints. This paper will describe one training approach that has been repeatedly successful in developing law student instructors who believe in the potential of Street Law’s unique learner-centered methodology, are capable of designing and executing lessons exemplifying this approach, and who are committed to building and valuing community in their classrooms. 
Over the last four years, past and present staff from the Street Law Program at Georgetown University Law Center, in collaboration with their Irish and Scottish colleagues, have conducted seven in-person, weekend-long training workshops in Dublin with the Law Society of Ireland and in Edinburgh with the Law Society of Scotland. Although the context and audience differed, the weekend training programs remained essentially identical in both sites. Between Friday evening’s introductions and Sunday afternoon’s demonstration teaching sessions, the Street Law facilitators help build belief in the Street Law methodology, instructional capacity in the future Street Law teachers, and community among the young lawyers and law students who attend the training. 
Our objective in writing this paper is to present and describe our training program in a manner that will enable practitioners around the globe to review our approach, understand why it works, and adopt any potentially helpful aspects. We first introduce readers to Street Law and the Street Law methodology. We next explain how the Street Law methodology and our weekend orientation program is grounded in a robust body of research and exemplifies best practices in teaching and learning at the intersection of civic education, learner-centered education, intensive teacher preparation and community building. 
We then move from the theory and evidence to the practical with sections that will be of especial value to aspiring practitioners, educators, and interested Law Societies and legal bodies. We describe the introduction and adoption of Street Law by the Law Societies of Ireland and Scotland and highlight how Street Law reinforces and furthers the core principles and goals of each Law Society. We provide practitioners with a step-by-step description of each of the weekend training activities and explain how these activities play out in practice. For each of these activities, we discuss how the activity fits into our broader learning trajectory and reinforces our core goals of building belief, capacity, and community. 
We close with suggestions for further research, including a preview of our forthcoming companion paper that demonstrates the impact and efficacy of the Street Law Orientation program and positively answers the question “Does it work?” This second paper, with a narrower focus on the evaluation of quantitative and qualitative data, is presented separately to allow the reader to first focus on this paper’s presentation of the rationale and implementation components of our training model, to permit a more in-depth discussion of these results in the accompanying paper, and for practical considerations around length and scope. 


II. What is Street Law? 
During the 1960s and 1970s, as movements for social change and legal equality for women, minorities, and other traditionally marginalized or economically dispossessed populations gained strength and spread across geographic and political borders, law students, professors, and practitioners became increasingly interested in how the law could be used as a tool for effecting social change.[footnoteRef:5] One concrete outgrowth of these progressive reform pressures was the birth of the modern legal clinical and experiential learning movement.[footnoteRef:6]  [5:  Milstein, E.S. (2001). Clinical Legal Education in the United States: In-House Clinics, Externships, and Simulations. Journal of Legal Education, 51(3), 375-381.]  [6:  Milstein, E.S. (2001). Clinical Legal Education in the United States: In-House Clinics, Externships, and Simulations. Journal of Legal Education, 51(3), 375-381.] 

Legal clinics and experiential courses are law school programs designed to provide law students with the opportunity to apply and connect their classroom learning with real world practice under the close supervision of a law school faculty member.[footnoteRef:7] Law students gain invaluable hands-on experience working with clients, forming and articulating legal arguments, and problem-solving in complex, real world settings. These programs typically serve populations who might not otherwise have access to the legal system or causes that lack the profile or financial resources to support litigation efforts.[footnoteRef:8] Today, popular clinical and experiential learning offerings run the gamut from family and consumer law to criminal justice and defense, and from environmental advocacy to education law. Although the clinical legal movement first took root in the United States, both the concept and practice of involving law students in experiential learning opportunities has spread rapidly around the globe.[footnoteRef:9] [7:  Wizner, S. (2000). The Law School Clinic: Legal Education in the Interests of Justice. Fordham Law Review, 70, 1929-1937.]  [8:  Wizner, S. (2000). The Law School Clinic: Legal Education in the Interests of Justice. Fordham Law Review, 70, 1929-1937.]  [9:  Wilson, R.J. (2004). Training for Justice: The Global Reach of Clinical Legal Education. Penn State International Law Review, 22(3), 421-431.] 

The Street Law program that originated at Georgetown University Law Center in 1972 as a “course in practical law”[footnoteRef:10] for high school students taught by law students for academic credit[footnoteRef:11] has become far more than that today. Street Law programs now exist at more than 50 law schools in the United States, dozens of international law schools, and in a variety of community and non-profit partnerships.[footnoteRef:12] From the outset, Street Law’s appeal has been derived just as much from its relevant law-related content–“the law useful in people’s daily lives, the legal processes, Constitutional principles and values on which these are based”[footnoteRef:13]—as from the activity based, participatory teaching methodology it employs. Over forty plus years, Street Law programs have steadily improved this learner-centered, democratic model of teaching and learning and its interactive and experiential methodology to not only teach about the law but also to create an experience of justice in the classroom.  [10:  Newman, J., O’Brien, E.L., Arbetman, L.P., Cameron, L., McClymont, M., & McMahon, E. (1977). Street Law: A Course in Practical Law. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.]  [11:  Roe, R. (2012). Law School-High School. In S.E. Redfield (Ed.), The Education Pipeline to the Professions: Programs That Work to Increase Diversity (pp. 135-144). Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.]  [12:  Robust international Street Law programs include those in South Africa (www.streetlaw.org.za), the Czech Republic (i.e., http://streetlaw.eu), the United Kingdom (i.e., http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/law/life/pro-bono/streetlaw.aspx), Hong Kong (i.e., https://disabilityrights.law.hku.hk/street-law/), and Australia (i.e., www.streetlaw.org.au). Additionally, there are myriad examples of local bar associations, community organizations, state-related law organizations, regional global associations, private corporations, and even a dedicated non-profit, Street Law, Inc., providing community legal education around the world on a range of topics under the umbrella term, “street law,” or related terms such as community legal education, justice education, and democracy education. Street Law, Inc. offers one compilation of global programs through their website. Street Law, Inc. (n.d.). Program Locations. Retrieved from http://www.streetlaw.org/en/program_map.]  [13:  Newman, J., O’Brien, E.L., Arbetman, L.P., Cameron, L., McClymont, M., & McMahon, E. (1977). Street Law: A Course in Practical Law. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.] 

Street Law introduces learners to the law and legal systems while remaining grounded in the best practices in civic education that research shows help learners develop their cognitive, expressive, academic, and critical thinking abilities through the exploration of a variety of civic and law-related situations. Street Law programs are characterized by the diversity of teaching and learning methods. Specific methods include case studies, role plays, hypotheticals, problems, mock trials, hearings and legislative activities, negotiations, small group discussions, news articles, video clips, guest participants, field trips, projects, and simulations. The wide range of topics includes current events and issues, negotiations and dispute resolution, human rights, criminal law and procedure, family, housing, liability, and many others. 
Over time, Street Law, regardless of program or country, has become known for its distinctive emphasis on learner-centeredness and corresponding de-emphasis on direct instruction. Today, learning with Street Law at both the law school and community levels is accomplished largely through non-directive instruction that emphasizes the cognitive, expressive, and reflective work of the learners themselves. Essentially, the teacher serves not as a lecturer but as the facilitator who guides students through the components of each lesson.[footnoteRef:14] The students do the talking and thinking; and they do the primary cognitive expressive work to create substantive meaning and connections to the law and legal theories. Using rich, thoughtfully structured lessons, this methodology draws from both the hands-on model of clinical legal education as well as the best practices for effective teaching and learning, as discussed infra. This student-centered approach is well suited both for the new instructors[footnoteRef:15] and for the learners they teach,[footnoteRef:16] from elementary and high school students[footnoteRef:17] to adults.  [14:  For more on this approach of guided participation, see, e.g., Mascolo, M. F. (2009). Beyond student-centered and teacher-centered pedagogy: Teaching and learning as guided participation. Pedagogy and the Human Sciences, 1(1), 3-27.]  [15:  Roe, R. (2012). Law School-High School. In S.E. Redfield (Ed.), The Education Pipeline to the Professions: Programs That Work to Increase Diversity (pp. 135-144). Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.]  [16:  American Bar Association. (2003). Essentials of Law-Related Education. Chicago, IL.]  [17:  Arthurs, S. (2015). Street Law: Creating Tomorrow’s Citizens Today. Lewis & Clark Law Review, 19(4), 925-961.] 

At the same time as the Street Law programs are providing an important public service for non-lawyers, they are also equipping lawyers with important skills for their legal practice. Lawyers and law students are offered the unusual opportunity to hone their lawyering skills in real life settings. The instructors gain substantive legal knowledge in a wide variety of areas by researching the topics and creating and conducting lessons for others. Preparation for classes, particularly for dynamic, learner-centered ones, teaches organization, efficiency, clarity of expression, responsiveness, and appreciation for different views, experiences and cultures. Classroom exchanges build legal analysis skills and the ability to think on one’s feet.[footnoteRef:18]  [18:  “The methodology that develops deep knowledge is ideally suited for the development of lawyering skills….” In Roe, R.L. (2016) Valuing Student Speech Revisited, Klinika: Czasopismo Fundacji Uniwersyteckich Poradni Prawnych, Numer Specjalny, 21-24 at 24.] 

Other benefits correspond with Shultz and Zedeck’s “lawyering effectiveness factors”.[footnoteRef:19] Grouped into eight broad categories, these factors are: intellectual and cognitive; research and information gathering; communications; planning and organizing; conflict resolution; client and business relations/entrepreneurship, working with others; and character. In preparing their students for mock trials, law students develop advocacy and research skills, for example. Classroom management challenges require detailed attention to planning and organization as well as conflict resolution and client relations. Street Law audiences are often very diverse and the program draws upon established best practices in civic education to promote increased tolerance, respect, and understanding of others, an appreciation for the importance of democratic debate, and a practical grounding in the complexities of implementing justice and human rights in real world settings. [19:  Schultz, M.M., & Zedeck, S. (2009). Predicting Lawyer Effectiveness: A New Assessment for Use in Law School Admission Decisions. CELS 2009 4th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies Paper.] 

This article describes the first step in the Street Law process—how to teach the law students, new lawyers, or trainees to be Street Law instructors,[footnoteRef:20] with particular reference to the weekend workshop series conducted for the recently qualified lawyers and lawyers-in-training in the Law Societies of Ireland and Scotland in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Although we recognize that one of the most powerful qualities of an effective Street Law session is that everyone—including the teachers or facilitators—is learning and that the Street Law methodology can be applied in multiple different settings, including in different legal settings, this can lead to some confusion in terms. Thus, for the purpose of this paper we will refer to the experienced Street Law faculty/trainers from Georgetown and the host sites as facilitators. The facilitators are the ones who design and lead the weekend training sessions. We will refer to the main audience of this weekend training, whether lawyers, law students, or community leaders as trainees. These trainees are the people who will be going into the schools or communities to lead interactive lessons. We will refer to the ultimate consumers of these Street Law lessons, typically secondary school students or community members seeking to know more about the law, as students.[footnoteRef:21] [20:  The Street Law program model in law schools involves a combination of training in the methodology and content of the course as well as highly supportive supervision of the law student instructors.  These instructors typically receive academic credit, attend a multi-day orientation and weekly seminars, are given regular, supportive supervision through observations, feedback and consultations with faculty, engage in reflection through journals, lesson planning analysis, and portfolio assessment, and receive substantial administrative support for their placements in the school, corrections and community settings.]  [21:  In Ireland, the trainees are at the start of their Professional Practice Course I (PPCI) at the Law Society and for most of them this is the beginning of their 2 year traineeship. The students are in their fourth year of secondary school, which is referred to as transition year (TY). In Scotland, the trainees are generally undergraduate LLB students (although occasionally are postgraduate students undertaking the vocational Diploma in Professional Legal Practice). The students are pupils in secondary school typically aged between 14 years old and 16 years old.
A full explanation of the routes to qualification as a solicitor in both jurisdictions can be found in Section 7 of the Fair Access to the Legal Profession report. Marrs, R., & Meighan, D. (2014). Fair Access to the Legal Profession. The Law Society of Scotland. Retrieved from https://www.lawscot.org.uk/media/295065/fair-access-for-publication-300114.pdf.] 

The Street Law Orientation program, first designed and implemented at Georgetown and then developed into an international module, was designed to meet a number of goals and challenges: 
1) meeting the learning needs, abilities, and interests of a diverse and wide range of learners, from high to low levels of literacy and socialization to school and diverse life experiences; 
2) creating a learning and teaching trajectory where students and trainees experience and build upon success; 
3) developing both knowledge and skills, particularly cognitive and expressive skills; 
4) developing respectful, democratic discourse essential for participatory learning, i.e., agreeing to disagree, and learning about self-government and self-regulation; and 
5) expeditiously transforming typically novice trainees having little experience in this methodology[footnoteRef:22] into learner-centered teachers who can adapt and execute Street Law lessons informed by their own cultural context and student population.  [22:  Law student instructors rarely have teaching experience or learner-centered learning experience. Rather, they generally have histories of exposure to conventional education and most recently to legal education.] 

At the most fundamental level, the Orientation program seeks to instill in law student instructors belief in the learner-centered methodology, capacity to design and implement Street Law lessons, and confidence in the power of community. With the three goals of building belief, capacity and community as overarching aims, the training has evolved[footnoteRef:23] to meet at least six objectives.  The training aspires to:  [23:  Georgetown Street Law orientations from the outset have included components of the objectives listed below, initially delivered through a combination of direct instruction and examples. While the orientations for the SL HS clinic over the years expanded to five days, to meet the demands of teaching a regular high school course for two semesters, the orientations for the less formal SL Corrections Clinic remained at 2 days.  Hence, when the GULC SL clinic was invited to conduct international trainings for law schools in 2000 (the Czech Republic) and subsequently (in Istanbul in 2004), the trainings followed a two-day model. This model has largely been employed through the present, with significant and important modification and adaptations, in many other trainings and by other combinations of trainers around the globe.] 

1) set out a lesson trajectory from introductory to complex across cognitive, analytical and expressive domains,[footnoteRef:24]  [24:  To convey in an experiential way the trajectory of a semester’s or year’s learning activities and the principles behind them.  E.g., cognitive, from familiar to new, simple to complex, straightforward to nuanced, concrete to relative;  analytical, from knowledge and opinions to well-reasoned; expressive, from spontaneous to practiced and performed, informal to formal, from terms to sentences to paragraphs to theses.] 

2) be conducted consistently with learner-centered principles,[footnoteRef:25]  [25:  I.e., the delivery of the workshops should itself be largely learner-centered.] 

3) be immediately useful to the trainees[footnoteRef:26]  [26:  I.e., to provide resources in the form of concrete lessons and methods that can be utilized immediately by the instructors in their first 2 weeks of teaching and also as examples across the entire teaching period. These should also include topics like lesson planning, assessment, specific techniques, classroom management, and administration.] 

4) encourage trainee autonomy, creativity, empathy, imagination and reflection; 
5) promote principles of justice,[footnoteRef:27] and  [27:  I.e., Don’t merely talk about justice, but teach in accordance with justice. This means valuing students, attempting to see their points of view and understand the nature of their experiences, treating them fairly, and encouraging and supporting them and their ideas. Bettelheim, B. (1987). A Good Enough Parent: A Book on Child-Rearing (pp. 135-144). New York, N.Y.: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.] 

6) demonstrate Street Law’s value for the trainees’ professional development.[footnoteRef:28]   [28:  The Street Law program makes valuable contributions to law students’ legal education and professional development. See, e.g., Schultz, M.M., & Zedeck, S. (2011). Predicting Lawyer Effectiveness: Broadening the Basis for Law School Admission Decisions. Law & Social Inquiry, 36(3), 620-661.] 

III. Literature Review: Best Practices in Civic Education and Building Belief, Capacity, and Community
The Street Law Orientation weekend is a unique form of civic education and teacher training. Over the course of one weekend, from Friday night through to Sunday afternoon, the facilitators and trainees will work together to develop a disparate group of forty individuals with some legal knowledge but little or no teaching experience into a confident and empowered community of novice teachers excited and capable of delivering interactive and engaging Street Law lessons to classrooms of secondary school students. Trainees exit the weekend believing in the potential of learner-centered education, capable of delivering learner-centered lessons, and part of a unique teaching and learning community. The Street Law Orientation weekend accomplishes this by drawing on best practices and proven research in the fields of civic education, learner-centered education, teacher preparation, and community building. We review these practices and the supporting research, and then discuss how they manifest in the Street Law Orientation weekend in the section that follows. 
A) Civic Education
At its core, Street Law is a type of civic education. The goal of the Street Law Orientation weekend is to educate and empower the trainees so that they can later educate and empower their secondary school students around their legal rights, responsibilities, and options. And though Street Law is distinct in approach and process from typical civic education programs, the Street Law model is grounded in the best practices of civic education and seeks to promote many of the same outcomes.
Effective civic education provides a host of pro-social outcomes at the individual, community, and societal level.[footnoteRef:29] Students become better thinkers, writers, and speakers.[footnoteRef:30] They practice and acquire invaluable communication, collaboration, and leadership skills.[footnoteRef:31] Students develop a sense of self-efficacy and ability to effect change that translates into both how they see themselves as members of a society and their ability to improve that society.[footnoteRef:32] Quality civic education helps students become more tolerant, more involved, and better able to resolve conflict.[footnoteRef:33] Students learn to understand and appreciate their own interests while also considering the interests and perspectives of those with different mindsets.[footnoteRef:34] Students are less likely to be truant, more likely to graduate from secondary school, and show a marked increase in educational aspirations and motivation.[footnoteRef:35] [29:  Niemi, R.G., & Junn, J. (1998). Civic Education: What Makes Students Learn. New Haven: Yale University Press; Campbell, D.E. (2008). Voice in the Classroom: How an Open Classroom Climate Fosters Political Engagement Among Adolescents. Political Behavior, 30(4), 437-454. https://davidecampbell.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/7-voice.pdf; Annenberg Public Policy Center. (2011). Guardian of Democracy: The civic mission of schools. Retrieved from http://civicmission.s3.amazonaws.com/118/f0/5/171/1/Guardian-of-Democracy-report.pdf; Kahne, J.E., & Sporte, S.E. (2008). Developing Citizens: The Impact of Civic Learning Opportunities on Students’ Commitment to Civic Participation. American Educational Research Journal, 45(3), 738-766. http://www.civicsurvey.org/sites/default/files/publications/Developing%20Citizens_Web_Version.pdf; Cohen, A.K., & Chaffee, B. W. (2013). The Relationship Between Adolescents’ Civic Knowledge, Civic Attitude, and Civic Behavior and their Self-Reported Future Likelihood of Voting. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 8(1), 43-57. doi:10.1177/1746197912456339; Andolina, M. W., Jenkins, K., Zukin, C., & Keeter, S. (2003). Habits from home, lessons from school: Influences on youth civic engagement. Political Science and Politics, 36(02), 275-280. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S104909650300221X; Torney-Purta, J. (2002). The School’s Role in Developing Civic Engagement: A Study of Adolescents in Twenty-Eight Countries. Applied Developmental Science, 6(4), 203-212. doi:10.1207/S1532480XADS0604_7; Richardson, W.K., & Torney-Purta, J. (2008). Connections Between Concepts of Democracy, Citizen Engagement, and Schooling for 14-Year-Olds Across Six Countries. In B.C. Rubin & J.M. Giarelli (Eds.), Civic Education for Diverse Citizens in Global Times: Rethinking Theory and Practice (79-104). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum; Verba, S., Schlozman, K.L., & Brady, H.E. (1995). Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.]  [30:  Hess, D. (2009). Controversy in the Classroom: The Democratic Power of Discussion. New York: Routledge; Andolina, M. W., Jenkins, K., Zukin, C., & Keeter, S. (2003). Habits from home, lessons from school: Influences on youth civic engagement. Political Science and Politics, 36(02), 275-280. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S104909650300221X; Niemi, R.G., & Junn, J. (1998). Civic Education: What Makes Students Learn. New Haven: Yale University Press; McIntosh, H., Berman, S., & Youniss, J. (2010). A Five-Year Evaluation of a Comprehensive High School Civic Engagement Initiative. CIRCLE Working Paper# 70. Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). Retrieved from http://civicyouth.org/PopUps/WorkingPapers/WP_70_McIntosh_Berman_Youniss.pdf; Avery, P.G., Levy, S.A., & Simmons, A.M. (2013). Deliberating Controversial Public Issues as Part of Civic Education. The Social Studies, 104(3), 105-114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2012.691571; McDevitt, M., & Kiousis, S. (2006). Deliberative Learning: An Evaluative Approach to Interactive Civic Education. Communication Education, 55(3), 247-264. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03634520600748557]  [31:  McIntosh, H., Berman, S., & Youniss, J. (2010). A Five-Year Evaluation of a Comprehensive High School Civic Engagement Initiative. CIRCLE Working Paper# 70. Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). Retrieved from http://civicyouth.org/PopUps/WorkingPapers/WP_70_McIntosh_Berman_Youniss.pdf; Johnson, D.W. & Johnson, R.T. (2007). Creative Controversy: Intellectual Challenge in the Classroom (4th ed.). Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company; Johnson, D.W. & Johnson, R.T. (2005). Democratic Decision Making, Political Discourse and Constructive Controversy. The Cooperative Link, 20(1). 3; Annenberg Public Policy Center. (2011). Guardian of Democracy: The civic mission of schools. Retrieved from http://civicmission.s3.amazonaws.com/118/f0/5/171/1/Guardian-of-Democracy-report.pdf.]  [32:  McIntosh, H., Berman, S., & Youniss, J. (2010). A Five-Year Evaluation of a Comprehensive High School Civic Engagement Initiative. CIRCLE Working Paper# 70. Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). Retrieved from http://civicyouth.org/PopUps/WorkingPapers/WP_70_McIntosh_Berman_Youniss.pdf; Feldman, L., Pasek, J., Romer, D., & Jamieson, K.H. (2007). Identifying Best Practices in Civic Education: Lessons from the Student Voices Program. American Journal of Education, 114(1), 75-100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/520692; Sidhu, D.S. (2013). Civic Education as an Instrument of Social Mobility. Denver University Law Review, 90(4), 977-1002. Retrieved from http://www.law.du.edu/documents/denver-university-law-review/v90-4_Issue4_Sidhu_FINAL_ToDarby_092213.pdf; Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P. & Saez, E. (2014). Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States. Retrieved from http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/images/mobility_geo.pdf]  [33:  Carpini, M. X. D., & Keeter, S. (1997). What Americans know about politics and why it matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Nie, N. H., Junn, J., & Stehlik-Barry, K. (1996). Education and Democratic Citizenship in America. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press; Avery, P. G., Levy, S. A., & Simmons, A. M. (2013). Deliberating Controversial Public Issues As Part of Civic Education 1. The Social Studies, 104(3), 105-114; McDevitt, M., & Kiousis, S. (2006). Deliberative learning: An Evaluative Approach to Interactive Civic Education. Communication education, 55(3), 247-264; Flanagan, C., Stoppa, T., Syvertsen, A.K., & Stout, M. (2010). Schools and Social Trust. In L. Sherrod, J. Torney-Purta, & C. Flanagan (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth (307-330). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; Barr, D. (2010). Continuing a Tradition of Research on the Foundations of Democratic Education: The National Professional Development and Evaluation Project. Facing History and Ourselves. Brookline, MA: Facing History and Ourselves. Retrieved from https://www.facinghistory.org/sites/default/files/Continuing_a_Tradition_v93010_0.pdf; Popkin, S.L., & Dimock, M.A. (2000). Knowledge, Trust, and International Reasoning. In A. Lupia & M.D. McCubbins (Eds.) Elements of Reason: Cognition, Choice, and the Bounds of Rationality (214-238). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press; Annenberg Public Policy Center. (2011). Guardian of Democracy: The civic mission of schools. Retrieved from http://civicmission.s3.amazonaws.com/118/f0/5/171/1/Guardian-of-Democracy-report.pdf]  [34:  Carpini, M. X. D., & Keeter, S. (1997). What Americans know about politics and why it matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Hess, D. (2009). Controversy in the Classroom: The Democratic Power of Discussion. New York, NY: Routledge; Avery, P. G., Levy, S. A., & Simmons, A. M. (2013). Deliberating Controversial Public Issues As Part of Civic Education 1. The Social Studies, 104(3), 105-114; Galston, W. A. (2007). Civic knowledge, civic education, and civic engagement: A summary of recent research. International Journal of Public Administration, 30(6-7), 623-642.]  [35:  Annenberg Public Policy Center. (2011). Guardian of Democracy: The civic mission of schools. Retrieved from http://civicmission.s3.amazonaws.com/118/f0/5/171/1/Guardian-of-Democracy-report.pdf; Cohen, J., McCabe, L., Michelli, N. M., & Pickeral, T. (2009). School climate: Research, Policy, Practice, and Teacher Education. Teachers College Record, 111(1), 180-213; Starks, C. F. (2010). Connecting civic education to civil right and responsibility: a strategy for reducing high school dropout among African American students (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from http://csus-dspace.calstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10211.9/512/Starks%20Thesis.pdf?sequence=1; Sidhu, D.S. (2013). Civic Education as an Instrument of Social Mobility. Denver University Law Review, 90(4), 977-1002. Retrieved from http://www.law.du.edu/documents/denver-university-law-review/v90-4_Issue4_Sidhu_FINAL_ToDarby_092213.pdf; Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P. & Saez, E. (2014). Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States. Retrieved from http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/images/mobility_geo.pdf; Chan, W. Y., Ou, S., & Reynolds, A. (2014). Adolescent Civic Engagement and Adult Outcomes: An Examination Among Urban Racial Minorities. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 43, 1829-1843; Dávila, A., & Mora, M. T. (2007). Civic engagement and high school academic progress: An analysis using NELS data, [Part I of An Assessment of Civic Engagement and High School Academic Progress]. CIRCLE Working Paper# 52. Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=C67B8B374CE539217D8CAA08DBFABE6B?doi=10.1.1.188.9260&rep=rep1&type=pdf] 

Unfortunately, the majority of civic education efforts do not realize the promise of these outcomes as civic education is too often synonymous with textbook-based learning and rote memorization.[footnoteRef:36] The pedagogy and methods modeled and taught during the Street Law Orientation weekend offer an engaging and vibrant alternative that draws upon the best practices in civic education to provide students with a meaningful, interactive, and memorable learning experience. Every activity is discussion-based, team-oriented, and occurs in an open classroom climate. Trainees engage in multiple different democratic simulations and practice their civic skills over the course of the weekend. Additionally, following the Orientation weekend, the majority of the trainees will go on to teach in educational settings where high-quality civic instruction is most likely to have the greatest impact. [36:  Kahne, J., Chi, B., & Middaugh, E. (2006). Building Social Capital for Civic and Political Engagement: The Potential of High-School Civics Courses. Canadian Journal of Education, 29 (2), 387-409; Torney-Purta, J. (2002). The School’s Role in Developing Civic Engagement: A Study of Adolescents in Twenty-Eight Countries. Applied Developmental Science, 6 (4), 203-212; Larson, R., & Hansen, D. (2005). The Development of Strategic Thinking: Learning to Impact Human Systems in a Youth Activism Program. Human Development, 48, 327-349; Baldi, S., Perie, M., Skidmore, D., Greenberg, E., & Hahn, C. (2001). What democracy means to ninth graders: U.S. results from the International IEA civic education study. National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education; Saavedra, A.R. (2012). Dry to Dynamic Civic Education Curricula. In D. Campbell, M. Levinson, & F. Hess (Eds.), Making Civics Count: Citizenship Education for a New Generation (135-159). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press; Jamieson, K. H. (2013). The Challenges Facing Civic Education in the 21st Century. Daedalus, 142(2), 65-83.] 

A strong body of research supports the use of discussion-based activities as one of the most potent strategies for promoting student learning and, in particular, the effectiveness of classroom discussion in developing students’ higher order thinking and reasoning skills.[footnoteRef:37] Discussion and democratic interchange are core practices of the Street Law approach generally and a defining characteristic of the Orientation weekend in particular. Street Law’s heavy reliance on discussion is an intentional, evidence-based approach to teaching and learning that is central to the trainee experience and the development of the three themes of belief, capacity, and community. As such, a brief review of discussion-based outcomes is warranted. Brookfield and Preskill’s helpful enumeration of the 15 benefits of discussion provides an accessible overview of the skills and capacities that research shows students acquire through discussion: [37:  Brookfield, S.D. & Preskill, S. (2005). Discussion as a Way of Teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass; Larson, B. E. (2000). Classroom discussion: A method of instruction and a curriculum outcome. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16(5), 661-677; Andolina, M. W., Jenkins, K., Zukin, C., & Keeter, S. (2003). Habits from home, lessons from school: Influences on youth civic engagement. Political Science and Politics, 36(02), 275-280; McIntosh, H. & Muñoz, M. (2009). Predicting Civic Engagement in Urban High School Students 4–5, 9 CIRCLE Working Paper# 69. Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).] 

1) [Discussion] helps students explore a diversity of perspectives.
2) It increases students’ awareness of and tolerance for ambiguity or complexity.
3) It helps students recognize and investigate their assumptions.
4) It encourages attentive, respectful listening.
5) It develops new appreciation for continuing differences.
6) It increases intellectual agility.
7) It helps students become connected to a topic.
8) It shows respect for students’ voices and experiences.
9) It helps students learn the processes and habits of democratic discourse.
10) It affirms students as co-creators of knowledge.
11) It develops the capacity for the clear communication of ideas and meaning.
12) It develops habits of collaborative learning.
13) It increases breadth and makes students more empathetic.
14) It helps students develop skills of synthesis and integration.
15) It leads to transformation. (pp. 21-22).[footnoteRef:38] [38:  Brookfield, S.D. & Preskill, S. (2005). Discussion as a Way of Teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.] 

The importance of classroom discussions in civic education courses is especially pronounced because the set of skills and capacities students develop through discussion are the same skills and capacities required of active, informed, and educated citizens who can understand, think critically, communicate, and achieve consensus on civic issues. In addition to the development of students’ higher order thinking, communication, and reasoning skills, there is a predictive connection between classroom discussions of controversial issues and the development of the skills and capacities students need to be effective citizens. This is why classroom discussion is one of the six proven practices of effective civic education.[footnoteRef:39]   [39:  Annenberg Public Policy Center. (2011). Guardian of Democracy: The civic mission of schools. Retrieved from http://civicmission.s3.amazonaws.com/118/f0/5/171/1/Guardian-of-Democracy-report.pdf; Rubin, B. (2007). “There’s Still Not Justice”: Youth Civic Identity Development Amid Distinct School and Community Contexts. Teachers College Record, 109 (2), 449-481; Kahne, J. & Westheimer, J. (2006). The Limits of Political Efficacy: Educating Citizens for a Democratic Society. PS: Political Science & Politics, 39(2), 289-296; Guilfoile, L. & Delander, B. (2014). Guidebook: Six Proven Practices for Effective Civic Learning. Retrieved from: http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/01/10/48/] 

Of course, as with any teaching practice, classroom discussions must be intentionally structured and implemented to realize these positive student outcomes and longer term pro-social behaviors.[footnoteRef:40] An open classroom climate, where all students feel comfortable expressing and sharing their views on controversial issues, adopting different viewpoints, probing the reasoning and evidence supporting opposing views, and respectfully disagreeing with each other and with the teacher is a critical requirement of authentic and meaningful discussions.[footnoteRef:41] Discussions that occur in an open classroom climate are empowering, inclusive, and powerful drivers of collective and individual learning.[footnoteRef:42]  [40:  Soter, A. O., Wilkinson, I. A., Murphy, P. K., Rudge, L., Reninger, K., & Edwards, M. (2008). What the discourse tells us: Talk and indicators of high-level comprehension. International Journal of Educational Research, 47(6), 372-391; Hess, D. (2009). Controversy in the Classroom: The Democratic Power of Discussion. New York: Routledge. ]  [41:  Campbell, D. (2008). Voice in the Classroom: How an Open Classroom Climate Fosters Political Engagement Among Adolescents, Political Behavior, 30 (4), 437-454; Soter, A. O., Wilkinson, I. A., Murphy, P. K., Rudge, L., Reninger, K., & Edwards, M. (2008). What the discourse tells us: Talk and indicators of high-level comprehension. International Journal of Educational Research, 47(6), 372-391; Saavedra, A.R. (2012). Dry to Dynamic Civic Education Curricula. In D. Campbell, M. Levinson, & F. Hess (Eds.), Making Civics Count: Citizenship Education for a New Generation (135-159). Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press; Torney-Purta, J. (2002). The School’s Role in Developing Civic Engagement: A Study of Adolescents in Twenty-Eight Countries. Applied Developmental Science, 6 (4), 203-212; Nystrand, M. (2006). Research on the role of classroom discourse as it affects reading comprehension. Research in the Teaching of English, 392-412; Kahne, J. & Middaugh, E. (2008). High Quality Civic Education: What Is It and Who Gets It? Social Education, 72(1), 34-39; Hess, D. (2002). How Students Experience and Learn from the Discussion of Controversial Public Issues in Secondary Social Studies. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 17(4), 283-314. ]  [42:  Levinson, M. (2012). No Citizen Left Behind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Saavedra, A.R. (2012). Dry to Dynamic Civic Education Curricula. In D. Campbell, M. Levinson, & F. Hess (Eds.), Making Civics Count: Citizenship Education for a New Generation (135-159). Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press; Annenberg Public Policy Center. (2011). Guardian of Democracy: The civic mission of schools. Retrieved from http://civicmission.s3.amazonaws.com/118/f0/5/171/1/Guardian-of-Democracy-report.pdf; Cohen, J., McCabe, L., Michelli, N. M., & Pickeral, T. (2009). School climate: Research, Policy, Practice, and Teacher Education. Teachers College Record, 111(1), 180-213] 

Structured discussions that occur in an open classroom climate are hallmarks of the Street Law Orientation. As set forth in more detail below, from the opening ‘Who Gets the Heart?’ activity through to ‘Aliens,’ ‘Should it be a Crime?’ and the Innocence Project lessons, trainees work in small groups to deliberate and discuss the merits of multiple different possible courses of action. Trainees are provided with interesting opening hypotheticals and a concrete question that needs resolution but that has many possible answers (selecting the one individual who will receive the one heart available for transplant, for example). Trainees are given blocks of time to reach a group decision and then are prompted to adopt different positions or role play in order to consider and evaluate possible answers from multiple different perspectives. Facilitators actively solicit trainee opinions to begin discussions, ask open-ended questions, and model question uptake strategies as trainees are asked by both their peers and the facilitators to explain the reasoning and evidence in support of their claims. Over the course of the weekend, trainees will rotate through several different groups and reporting out responsibilities are randomly assigned. As the Orientation weekend progresses, trainees become more comfortable with the discussion and deliberation expectations, as evidenced both by more efficient processes of reaching consensus and an increase in the sharing of minority viewpoints.   
A second best practice in civic education woven into the Street Law Orientation centers on the use of democratic simulations and experiential learning such as group decision-making activities, Mock Trials, and criminal investigations.[footnoteRef:43] A robust body of research connects the potency of these classroom or school-based activities with improved student learning outcomes and both immediate and long-term participation in civic life.[footnoteRef:44] In practicing the skills and behaviors that individuals need to be engaged, informed, and active citizens, trainees are learning the skills and behaviors of citizenship. This occurs at multiple levels during the Orientation. First, the trainees engage in multiple different rounds of group discussion and interaction. Trainees are practicing their discussion and deliberation skills, engaging in negotiations and consensus building, and considering different viewpoints, perspectives and arguments. [43:  Annenberg Public Policy Center. (2011). Guardian of Democracy: The civic mission of schools. Retrieved from http://civicmission.s3.amazonaws.com/118/f0/5/171/1/Guardian-of-Democracy-report.pdf; Saavedra, A.R. (2012). Dry to Dynamic Civic Education Curricula. In D. Campbell, M. Levinson, & F. Hess (Eds.), Making Civics Count: Citizenship Education for a New Generation (135-159). Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press; Levinson, M. (2012). No Citizen Left Behind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ]  [44:  Annenberg Public Policy Center. (2011). Guardian of Democracy: The civic mission of schools. Retrieved from http://civicmission.s3.amazonaws.com/118/f0/5/171/1/Guardian-of-Democracy-report.pdf; Levinson, M. (2012). No Citizen Left Behind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Saavedra, A.R. (2012). Dry to Dynamic Civic Education Curricula. In D. Campbell, M. Levinson, & F. Hess (Eds.), Making Civics Count: Citizenship Education for a New Generation (135-159). Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press; Larson, B. E. (2000). Classroom discussion: A method of instruction and a curriculum outcome. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16(5), 661-677; Feldman, L., Pasek, J., Romer, D., & Jamieson, K. H. (2007). Identifying best practices in civic education: Lessons from the student voices program. American Journal of Education, 114(1), 75-100; Torney-Purta, J. (2002). The School’s Role in Developing Civic Engagement: A Study of Adolescents in Twenty-Eight Countries. Applied Developmental Science, 6 (4), 203-212; Kahne, J., Chi, B., & Middaugh, E. (2006). Building Social Capital for Civic and Political Engagement: The Potential of High-School Civics Courses. Canadian Journal of Education, 29 (2), 387-409.] 

Second, trainees participate in a simulated criminal investigation during the Saturday afternoon Innocence Project lessons. In those sessions, trainees assume different roles as police investigators, members of the media, and members of a jury as they work to evaluate and review reproductions of actual evidence and information used during two different murder investigations. Trainees work in groups to decide whether criminal charges should be brought against a murder suspect and how that decision should be communicated to the public. Trainees learn about criminal law standards, criminal law processes and procedures, and the relationship between investigations, the public, and the court system. Trainees are then able to compare their own group decisions to the ones made during the actual investigation and consider whether, and to what extent, reforms may be necessary in the criminal justice system. 
Finally, on Sunday morning, trainees will engage in a trial simulation and will adopt the roles of judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys as they work in small groups to try a case. This Mock Trial experience provides an experiential introduction to the legal system as trainees formulate and deliver legal arguments, probe and interrogate the strengths and weaknesses of their assigned positions, and learn about how the importance of integrating evidence and legal reasoning into a cohesive narrative. The Mock Trial introducs students to the democratic process for conflict resolution through the court system and the different roles played by the variety of actors within this system. As with every Street Law activity, there is no pre-determined correct answer and the ultimate resolution of the hypothetical depends entirely on how the trainees understand, frame, and present their arguments. 
In addition to the best practices employed during the Street Law Orientation weekend, the work of the trainees after the weekend is intentionally focused on making a difference in schools and with students most in need of effective civic education and most likely to benefit from effective civic education. Research shows that students in low socioeconomic schools are much less likely to receive effective civic education instruction and practice.[footnoteRef:45] Providing effective civic education in these schools is a high leverage opportunity and the best use of limited resources as research also demonstrates that the positive effects of civic education in promoting student gains in civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions is relatively greater in these schools than in better-resourced schools.[footnoteRef:46] In both Ireland and Scotland, the majority of trainees will go on to teach in low socioeconomic schools, thus maximizing the potential effect the Street Law program will have in each setting.[footnoteRef:47]  [45:  Levinson, M. (2012). No Citizen Left Behind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Jamieson, K. H. (2013). The Challenges Facing Civic Education in the 21st Century. Daedalus, 142(2), 65-83; Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). (2013). All Together Now: Collaboration and Innovation for Youth Engagement: The Report of the Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge. Medford, MA: Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. Retrieved from http://civicyouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CIRCLE-youthvoting-individualPages.pdf; Galston, W. A. (2007). Civic knowledge, civic education, and civic engagement: A summary of recent research. International Journal of Public Administration, 30(6-7), 623-642; Kahne, J., & Middaugh, E. (2008). Democracy for Some: The Civic Opportunity Gap in High School. Circle Working Paper 59. Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).]  [46:  McIntosh, H., Berman, S., & Youniss, J. (2010). A Five-Year Evaluation of a Comprehensive High School Civic Engagement Initiative. CIRCLE Working Paper# 70. Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE); Atkins, R., & Hart, D. (2003). Neighborhoods, adults, and the development of civic identity in urban youth. Applied Developmental Science, 7(3), 156-164.; Balsano, A. B. (2005). Youth civic engagement in the United States: Understanding and addressing the impact of social impediments on positive youth and community development. Applied Developmental Science, 9(4), 188-201; Rogers, J., Mediratta, K., & Shah, S. (2012). Building Power, Learning Democracy Youth Organizing as a Site of Civic Development. Review of Research in Education, 36(1), 43-66; Flanagan, C., & Levine, P. (2010). Civic engagement and the transition to adulthood. The future of children, 20(1), 159-179.]  [47:  In Ireland, the Law Society of Ireland places Street Law trainees in fourteen different schools. Thirteen of these fourteen schools were categorized as Delivering Equality of Opportunity (DEIS) schools, a designation assigned to educationally disadvantaged schools in Ireland. For more on the DEIS designation, see: http://www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Services/DEIS-Delivering-Equality-of-Opportunity-in-Schools-/. In Scotland, the Law Society of Scotland places Street Law trainees in XX schools. YY of these XX schools are identified under the Scottish Index of Multiple Derivation (SIMD) as SIMD20 or SIMD40 schools, meaning that these schools are in the bottom two quintiles of schools as measured by the SIMD resource tool. For more on the SIMD designation, see: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/SIMD.] 


B) Building Belief: Learner-Centered Education
Developing trainees’ belief in the power and potency of learner-centered education is one of the three key goals of the Street Law Orientation weekend. Learner-centered education rests on the premise that students need to be actively involved in their own learning and that students construct knowledge, develop deeper conceptual understanding, and are better able to transfer their learning to new situations when they are authentically involved in the learning process.[footnoteRef:48] Learner-centered education is often contrasted with the more traditional top-down, teacher-centered approach known as instructionism that views students as empty vessels to be filled and teachers as the imparters and transmitters of everything students need to know.[footnoteRef:49] With learner-centered education, students’ prior knowledge is valued and the teacher’s role is to help students build bridges between their current understandings and the new subject matter.[footnoteRef:50]  [48:  Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.). (2005). The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. Cambridge University Press; Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of engineering education, 93(3), 223-231; Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.]  [49:  Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.). (2005). The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. Cambridge University Press; Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.]  [50:  Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Toshalis, E., & Nakkula, M. J. (2012). Motivation, engagement, and student voice. The Education Digest, 78(1), 29.] 

Students in learner-centered environments are in control of the learning process and become creators of meaning.[footnoteRef:51] As students actively integrate new information, experiences, relationships and perspectives into their preexisting structures and values, students develop new cognitive structures and build more complex understandings of both the present academic task and the different ways they can engage with challenging and unfamiliar topics.[footnoteRef:52] This process of wrestling with new ideas and engaging in cognitive conflict, accompanied by student demonstrations of their learning and reflection on the learning process helps students become better critical thinkers and develop enhanced analytical and higher order thinking skills.[footnoteRef:53]  [51:  Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Toshalis, E., & Nakkula, M. J. (2012). Motivation, engagement, and student voice. The Education Digest, 78(1), 29; Mostrom, A. M., & Blumberg, P. (2012). Does learning-centered teaching promote grade improvement? Innovative Higher Education, 37(5), 397-405.]  [52:  Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Cheang, K. I. (2009). Effect of Learner-Centered Teaching on Motivation and Learning Strategies in a Third-Year Pharmacotherapy course. American journal of pharmaceutical education, 73(3), 42; Crumly, C. (2014). Pedagogies for Student-Centered Learning: Online and On-Ground. Augsburg Fortress Publishers.]  [53:  Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of engineering education, 93(3), 223-231; Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative learning: Theory to practice. New directions for adult and continuing education, 1997(74), 5-12; Toshalis, E., & Nakkula, M. J. (2012). Motivation, engagement, and student voice. The Education Digest, 78(1), 29; Magnussen, L., Ishida, D., & Itano, J. (2000, November). The Impact of the Use of Inquiry-Based Learning as a Teaching Methodology on the Development of Critical Thinking. Journal of Nursing Education, 39(8), 360-364.] 

The benefits of learner-centered education are not limited to thinking skills, however. A robust body of research around learner-centered education and its essential components, interactive activities, collaborative processes, and student participation, evidence a host of positive academic, social, and emotional outcomes. Students in learner-centered classrooms are more engaged and motivated.[footnoteRef:54] These students perform and behave better in school and feel more connected to their peers and their schools.[footnoteRef:55] Learner-centered education improves student attendance, school completion rates, and student enjoyment of school.[footnoteRef:56] Students learn and retain more through learner-centered experiences and are better able to transfer their knowledge and learning to novel situations.[footnoteRef:57] [54:  Toshalis, E., & Nakkula, M. J. (2012). Motivation, engagement, and student voice. The Education Digest, 78(1), 29; Mitra, D. L. (2004). The Significance of Students: Can Increasing “Student Voice” in Schools Lead to Gains in Youth Development? Teachers College Record, 106(4), 651-688. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9620.2004.00354.x; Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of engineering education, 93(3), 223-231; Webb, E., Jones, A, Barker, P., & van Schaik, P. (2004). Using e-learning dialogues in higher education. Innovations in Teaching International, 41(1), 93-103.]  [55:  Goodenow, C. (1993). Classroom Belonging among Early Adolescent Students: Relationships to Motivation and Achievement. Journal of Early Adolescence, 13(1), 21-43; Daniels, E. & Arapostathis, M. (2005). What Do They Really Want? Student Voices and Motivation Research. Urban Education, 40(1), 34-59; Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of engineering education, 93(3), 223-231; Mitra, D. L. (2004). The Significance of Students: Can Increasing “Student Voice” in Schools Lead to Gains in Youth Development? Teachers College Record, 106(4), 651-688. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9620.2004.00354.x.]  [56:  Ekstrom, R.B., Goertz, M.E., Pollack, J.M., & Rock, D.A. (1986). Who Drops Out of High School and Why? Findings from a National Study. Teachers College Record 87(3), 356-373; Fielding, M. (2006). Leadership, Radical Student Engagement and the Necessity of Person-centred Education. International Journal of Leadership in Education 9(4), 299-313; Mitra, D. L. (2004). The Significance of Students: Can Increasing “Student Voice” in Schools Lead to Gains in Youth Development? Teachers College Record, 106(4), 651-688. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9620.2004.00354.x; Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of engineering education, 93(3), 223-231.]  [57:  Lowenstein, G. (1994). The Psychology of Curiosity; A Review and Reinterpretation Psychological Bulletin, 116(1):75 – 98; Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of engineering education, 93(3), 223-231.] 

Of course, to realize the benefits of learner-centered education requires an intentionality around the nature and processes of classroom activities, the academic tasks presented, and the student-teacher dynamic. Learner-centered classrooms are characterized by classroom activities that value student voice and participation.[footnoteRef:58] Students are encouraged to use their reasoning skills, creativity, and strategic thinking abilities to approach and resolve problems that both have more than one right answer and more than one pathway to a final conclusion.[footnoteRef:59] Group deliberation and group problem solving are hallmarks of effective learner-centered education as students learn from their peers and from the interaction between their own ideas and the ideas of their classmates.[footnoteRef:60] The teacher is positioned as a co-constructor of knowledge and a facilitator of student learning rather than a gatekeeper of information.[footnoteRef:61] Through this process of independent discovery, discourse, dialogue, and reflection, students become meaning-makers and gain a sense of agency over their own learning.[footnoteRef:62]  [58:  Mostrom, A. M., & Blumberg, P. (2012). Does learning-centered teaching promote grade improvement? Innovative Higher Education, 37(5), 397-405; Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative learning: Theory to practice. New directions for adult and continuing education, 1997(74), 5-12; Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.]  [59:  Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative learning: Theory to practice. New directions for adult and continuing education, 1997(74), 5-12; Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.]  [60:  Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative learning: Theory to practice. New directions for adult and continuing education, 1997(74), 5-12; Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of engineering education, 93(3), 223-231.]  [61:  Crumly, C. (2014). Pedagogies for Student-Centered Learning: Online and On-Ground. Augsburg Fortress Publishers; Cheang, K. I. (2009). Effect of learner-centered teaching on motivation and learning strategies in a third-year pharmacotherapy course. American journal of pharmaceutical education, 73(3), 42.]  [62:  Toshalis, E., & Nakkula, M. J. (2012). Motivation, engagement, and student voice. The Education Digest, 78(1), 29; Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Mitra, D. L. (2004). The Significance of Students: Can Increasing “Student Voice” in Schools Lead to Gains in Youth Development? Teachers College Record, 106(4), 651-688. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9620.2004.00354.x.] 

The Street Law Orientation weekend is heavily learner-centered. The goal is to introduce trainees to the practice and benefits of learner-centered education in a highly learner-centered way; rather than list the benefits or rely on research around the effectiveness of learner-centered pedagogy and methodology, trainees experience learner-centered education as participants. Through the process of firsthand engagement followed by debrief, reflection, and critique, trainees come to appreciate the powerful transformative power of learner-centered education and can then draw on their own experience to inform their understandings around the efficacy of this approach in promoting student engagement, motivation, and learning. This experiential approach enables trainees to develop their own belief in the potential of learner-centered education.
From the opening activity, ‘Who Gets the Heart?’ through to the final Quaker-style reflection, trainees are presented with a series of interactive activities that require them to draw upon their existing knowledge and values, engage in discussion and debate with their peers, and negotiate and achieve group accord around a proposed solution. There are no predetermined answers to any activity and students quickly learn that their voices, opinions, and reasoning skills are valued and honored throughout the process. Over the course of the weekend, trainees are introduced to a variety of novel and creative scenarios and hypotheticals of increasing complexity, each requiring them to work collaboratively and construct meaning in a new learning framework. The diversity of interactive activities and the fun nature of these activities is intentional as research indicates that the “more unusual the learning action, the better it is remembered.”[footnoteRef:63] In addition to the novelty and fun component of these activities, the emphasis on trainee voice, choice, and challenge leads to consistently high levels of engagement and motivation throughout the weekend. [63:  Lowenstein, G. (1994) The Psychology of Curiosity; A Review and Reinterpretation Psychological Bulletin 116(1):75 – 98.] 

In ‘Who Gets the Heart?’, for example, trainees work in small groups to select one of five deserving and needy candidates for the sole available heart transplant. Each candidate profile contains factors that trainees can interpret differently as counseling in favor (or against) each candidate’s application. As trainees weigh and evaluate the merits of each candidate in their small groups, the different values and importance each trainee assigns to these factors becomes evident. Trainees share their opinions, present arguments in support of different candidates and must eventually reconcile their divergent priorities and perspectives and decide on a final candidate. As with each of the weekend’s activities, trainees are authentically in charge of the decision-making process (including determining how they will reach a final decision, whether through voting or required consensus, for example) and are prompted to share their group’s reasoning and arguments with the broader group.
With ‘Aliens’, trainee groups are presented with a list of fundamental rights and asked to collectively rank these rights in order of importance as the aliens slowly whittle away at the rights each group can retain. The trainees are eventually called upon to present a final list of three fundamental rights that the large group agrees are most critical, a conclusion reached only after the entire group assents. As with ‘Who Gets the Heart?’, the cognitive conflict that inheres to this process of actively assimilating new and diverse opinions into present knowledge structures in order to achieve group consensus requires trainees to examine and reflect on their own belief systems and values. A group decision requires compromise, consideration of peer perspectives, and an opportunity to present and defend one’s opinions while accommodating the opinions of others. Through this process, trainees develop an awareness around competing belief and value systems as well as a heightened sense of their own agency and the power of their individual voices in impacting a final decision.
The learner-centered trajectory of the Street Law Orientation weekend culminates in two activities that exemplify the best of learner-centered pedagogy, albeit in very different ways. Trainees first are given the opportunity to work in pairs to design their own practice teaching lesson that they might later use in their secondary school placements. And while the facilitators are available as resources, the trainees select their own topics and construct their own lesson with objectives, activities, and evaluation of their own choosing. The trainees are encouraged to draw upon any of the successful pedagogical practices or teaching moves they experienced during the weekend but are prompted to generate a novel lesson that they must then execute in front of small groups of their peers. This process of building and delivering their own lesson requires the trainees to assimilate, reflect, and apply their learning from the weekend and is a concrete demonstration of their new knowledge and cognitive structures around the teaching process and belief in learner-centered pedagogy. The weekend then closes with a Quaker-style reflection (I used to think . . . now I think . . .) during which each trainee shares an observation about how their thinking and approach to teaching has evolved over the course of the weekend. These observations invariably include a newfound appreciation for interactive activities, the value of student voice, and the importance of involving students in their own learning.

C) Building Capacity: Teacher Preparation
In addition to developing trainees’ beliefs in the merits of learner-centered education, the Street Law Orientation weekend also seeks to develop in trainees the capacity to design and deliver learner-centered lessons. And while we recognize that a comprehensive teacher preparation program involves years of study and practice, the challenge of preparing the trainees to be successful teachers in just one weekend is made much more manageable by several critical factors. First, the trainees will benefit from the in-class support of veteran teachers and will not be responsible for classroom management or any administrative responsibilities. Second, the trainees will be working in pairs to implement and execute each lesson. Third, the trainees will be delivering a limited number of lessons (typically between 6-10 classes) and many of these lessons will be the proven Street Law lessons that trainees have already experienced and reflected upon as participants during the Street Law Orientation weekend (all materials and lesson plans are shared with trainees after the weekend). These mitigating factors and the Street Law Orientation weekend’s focus on four core best practices in teacher preparation position the trainees to succeed in their field placements. 
First, the Street Law facilitators model the methods, practices, and activities that trainees will later employ with their own students. Research on teacher preparation and development demonstrates that teachers first learn about effective teaching by observing how effective teachers teach.[footnoteRef:64] Through observation of successful learner-centered techniques and pedagogical practices, new teachers gain an appreciation for what is possible and are more likely to replicate these techniques and practices in their own classrooms.[footnoteRef:65] Additionally, through participation in lessons and activities as learners, novice teachers gain an understanding for how these lessons play out in practice and what to expect as their own students experience similar lessons.[footnoteRef:66] Consistent modeling of learner-centered teaching techniques combined with firsthand involvement in learner-centered activities helps create in students both the desire and capacity to utilize these approaches in their own classrooms.[footnoteRef:67] [64:  Korthagen, F., Loughran, J., & Russell, T. (2006). Developing fundamental principles for teacher education programs and practices. Teaching and teacher education, 22(8), 1020-1041; Stigler, J. W., & Hiebert, J. (1999). The teaching gap: Best ideas from the world’s teachers for improving education in the classroom. New York, NY: Free Press; Darling-Hammond, L., & McLaughlin, M. W. (2011). Policies that support professional development in an era of reform. Phi delta kappan, 92(6), 81-92; Grossman, P. (2011). Framework for teaching practice: A brief history of an idea. Teachers College Record, 113(12), 2836-2843.]  [65:  Darling-Hammond, L., & McLaughlin, M. W. (2011). Policies that support professional development in an era of reform. Phi delta kappan, 92(6), 81-92; Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Hiebert, J., & Morris, A. K. (2012). Teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(2), 92-102.]  [66:  Grossman, P. (2011). Framework for teaching practice: A brief history of an idea. Teachers College Record, 113(12), 2836-2843; Hiebert, J., & Morris, A. K. (2012). Teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(2), 92-102; Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.]  [67:  Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Tabak, I., & Radinsky, J. (2015). Educators’ coaches, peers, and practices: Revisiting how teachers learn. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 24(3), 343–346; Hiebert, J., & Morris, A. K. (2012). Teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(2), 92-102.] 

But observation and participation alone are not enough. It is essential that new teachers reflect and process what they have seen and experienced in order to develop the capacity to integrate successful teaching techniques and methods into their own practices.[footnoteRef:68] The best teachers often make teaching seem effortless and it is only through reflection and deliberate inquiry that the intentionality of their efforts and the connection between their teaching moves and the resultant student learning can be made visible.[footnoteRef:69] This process of reflecting upon a learning experience from both the perspective of a teacher and a learner requires four discrete steps, often referred to as lesson study.[footnoteRef:70] First, the individual instructional routine, teaching move, or pedagogical method must be isolated, identified, and defined.[footnoteRef:71] Once defined, the particulars of precisely how the method was executed in the classroom should be called forth.[footnoteRef:72] Third, the rationale for the teacher’s use of this method and the connection between the move and desired outcome should be examined.[footnoteRef:73] Finally, aspiring teachers should consider how—and whether—each particular move might be adapted or transferred into their own settings or practice.[footnoteRef:74] This process of surfacing and reflecting pedagogical intent and execution helps new teachers develop the capacity and awareness to later incorporate similar (or better) methods into their own teaching.[footnoteRef:75] [68:  Ball, D. L., & Cohen, D. K. (1999). Developing practice, developing practitioners: Toward a practice-based theory of professional education. Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice, 3-22; Hiebert, J., & Morris, A. K. (2012). Teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(2), 92-102; Lieberman, Ann. (1995). Practices that support teacher development. Phi delta kappan 76(8), 591.]  [69:  Hiebert, J., & Morris, A. K. (2012). Teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(2), 92-102; Garet, M. S., Porter, A. C., Desimone, L., Birman, B. F., & Yoon, K. S. (2001). What makes professional development effective? Results from a national sample of teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 915-945; Zeichner, K. (2012). The turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(5), 376-382.]  [70:  Hiebert, J., & Morris, A. K. (2012). Teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(2), 92-102.]  [71:  Zeichner, K. (2012). The turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(5), 376-382; Hiebert, J., & Morris, A. K. (2012). Teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(2), 92-102.]  [72:  Zeichner, K. (2012). The turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(5), 376-382; Hiebert, J., & Morris, A. K. (2012). Teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(2), 92-102.]  [73:  Garet, M. S., Porter, A. C., Desimone, L., Birman, B. F., & Yoon, K. S. (2001). What makes professional development effective? Results from a national sample of teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 915-945; Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.]  [74:  Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Garet, M. S., Porter, A. C., Desimone, L., Birman, B. F., & Yoon, K. S. (2001). What makes professional development effective? Results from a national sample of teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 915-945.]  [75:  Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Tabak, I., & Radinsky, J. (2015). Educators’ coaches, peers, and practices: Revisiting how teachers learn. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 24(3), 343–346; Hiebert, J., & Morris, A. K. (2012). Teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(2), 92-102.] 

A third best practice of teacher preparation centers on the collaborative nature of teacher learning and development.[footnoteRef:76] The benefits of sharing a learning experience around new methods, pedagogy, or content-specific instruction and then collectively discussing and reflecting on that experience are multiple and significant. This collaborative process generates a diversity of ideas, observations, and perspectives that helps new teachers understand both the theoretical rationale and practical implications from multiple angles.[footnoteRef:77] The group approach to lesson study and the development of new skills and knowledge also creates communities of practice where the art and science of teaching is valued as both challenging and a continual improvement process.[footnoteRef:78] Working in teams to engage with problems of practice and skill development is safer and more welcoming as critique and critical analysis are depersonalized and each member participates in order to elevate the collective learning.[footnoteRef:79] Finally, the experience of contributing to collective improvement and problem solving in groups helps aspiring teachers realize the advantages of group work and understand how to structure effective groups within their own classrooms.[footnoteRef:80]    [76:  Easton, Lois Brown. (2008). From professional development to professional learning. Phi delta kappan 89(10), 755-761; Bush, Robert N. (1977). We know how to train teachers: Why not do so! Journal of Teacher Education 28(6), 5-9; Grossman, P., Compton, C., Igra, D., Ronfeldt, M., Shahan, E., & Williamson, P. (2009). Teaching practice: A cross-professional perspective. Teachers College Record, 111(9), 2055-2100; Papay, J. P., Taylor, E. S., Tyler, J. H., & Laski, M. (2016). Learning job skills from colleagues at work: Evidence from a field experiment using teacher performance data (No. w21986). National Bureau of Economic Research.]  [77:  Darling-Hammond, L., & McLaughlin, M. W. (2011). Policies that support professional development in an era of reform. Phi delta kappan, 92(6), 81-92; Easton, Lois Brown. (2008). From professional development to professional learning. Phi delta kappan 89(10), 755-761.]  [78:  Papay, J. P., Taylor, E. S., Tyler, J. H., & Laski, M. (2016). Learning job skills from colleagues at work: Evidence from a field experiment using teacher performance data (No. w21986). National Bureau of Economic Research; Darling-Hammond, L., & McLaughlin, M. W. (2011). Policies that support professional development in an era of reform. Phi delta kappan, 92(6), 81-92; Bush, Robert N. (1977). We know how to train teachers: Why not do so! Journal of Teacher Education 28(6), 5-9.]  [79:  Bush, Robert N. (1977). We know how to train teachers: Why not do so! Journal of Teacher Education 28(6), 5-9; Easton, Lois Brown. (2008). From professional development to professional learning. Phi delta kappan 89(10), 755-761; Grossman, P., Compton, C., Igra, D., Ronfeldt, M., Shahan, E., & Williamson, P. (2009). Teaching practice: A cross-professional perspective. Teachers College Record, 111(9), 2055-2100.]  [80:  Berry, B., Daughtrey, A., & Wieder, A. (2010). Preparing to Lead an Effective Classroom: The Role of Teacher Training and Professional Development Programs. Center For Teaching Quality; Garet, M. S., Porter, A. C., Desimone, L., Birman, B. F., & Yoon, K. S. (2001). What makes professional development effective? Results from a national sample of teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 915-945.] 

Without question, the single most important component of teacher training is providing teachers with the opportunity to practice their teaching by designing and implementing their own lessons.[footnoteRef:81] Teachers, like students, learn through doing.[footnoteRef:82] When teachers move from merely thinking about teaching or learning about theory into the process of preparing and delivering a lesson, they are challenged to think about how an idea would work in practice and the myriad different skills, techniques, and pedagogical moves required to execute that idea in a classroom.[footnoteRef:83] Actually implementing and delivering that lesson then allows teachers to rehearse and apply those skills and provides immediate feedback and accountability on both what went well and what can be improved for the next iteration.[footnoteRef:84]  [81:  Garet, M. S., Porter, A. C., Desimone, L., Birman, B. F., & Yoon, K. S. (2001). What makes professional development effective? Results from a national sample of teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 915-945; Grossman, P., & McDonald, M. (2008). Back to the future: Directions for research in teaching and teacher education. American Educational Research Journal, 45(1), 184-205; Grossman, P. (2011). Framework for teaching practice: A brief history of an idea. Teachers College Record, 113(12), 2836-2843; Ball, D. L., & Cohen, D. K. (1999). Developing practice, developing practitioners: Toward a practice-based theory of professional education. Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice, 1, 3-22; Zeichner, K. (2012). The turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(5), 376-382.]  [82:  Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Korthagen, F., Loughran, J., & Russell, T. (2006). Developing fundamental principles for teacher education programs and practices. Teaching and teacher education, 22(8), 1020-1041; Mascolo, M. F. (2009). Beyond student-centered and teacher-centered pedagogy: Teaching and learning as guided participation. Pedagogy and the Human Sciences, 1(1), 3-27.]  [83:  Garet, M. S., Porter, A. C., Desimone, L., Birman, B. F., & Yoon, K. S. (2001). What makes professional development effective? Results from a national sample of teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 915-945; Zeichner, K. (2012). The turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(5), 376-382; Easton, Lois Brown. (2008). From professional development to professional learning. Phi delta kappan 89(10), 755-761.]  [84:  Easton, Lois Brown. (2008). From professional development to professional learning. Phi delta kappan 89(10), 755-761; Grossman, P. (2011). Framework for teaching practice: A brief history of an idea. Teachers College Record, 113(12), 2836-2843.] 

Through this practice-based approach, teachers construct their own new knowledge frames and develop an informed vision and understanding of what teaching entails that is both grounded in authentic work and adapted to fit their own teaching style and context.[footnoteRef:85] Ideally, this practice teaching occurs in a safe, collaborative learning space where teachers feel comfortable both experimenting with new ideas and receiving feedback on how to modify or change their practice to be more effective.[footnoteRef:86] After all, “if you’re learning to paddle, you wouldn’t practice kayaking down rapids. You would paddle on a smooth lake to learn your strokes.”[footnoteRef:87] [85:  Hiebert, J., & Morris, A. K. (2012). Teaching, rather than teachers, as a path toward improving classroom instruction. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(2), 92-102; Zeichner, K. (2012). The turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(5), 376-382; Korthagen, F. A., & Kessels, J. P. (1999). Linking theory and practice: Changing the pedagogy of teacher education. Educational researcher, 28(4), 4-17.]  [86:  Grossman, P., Compton, C., Igra, D., Ronfeldt, M., Shahan, E., & Williamson, P. (2009). Teaching practice: A cross-professional perspective. Teachers College Record, 111(9), 2055-2100; Easton, Lois Brown. (2008). From professional development to professional learning. Phi delta kappan 89(10), 755-761]  [87:  Grossman, P., Compton, C., Igra, D., Ronfeldt, M., Shahan, E., & Williamson, P. (2009). Teaching practice: A cross-professional perspective. Teachers College Record, 111(9), 2055-2100, 2076.] 

During the course of the Street Law Orientation weekend, the trainees see best practices modeled, reflect on those practices, work collaboratively, and apply their new learning in practice teaching sessions. The Street Law facilitators know that teachers, especially novice teachers, will teach as they were taught and the facilitators model a wide array of techniques and routines designed to promote and encourage learner-centered education. Every activity is interactive and involves collaborative decision making. Trainee opinions and reasoning are critical components of each activity and the facilitators adopt open-minded inquiry stances in following up to student suggestions and thinking. Concrete teaching skills such as how to divide students into groups, centering techniques, and the power of positive feedback are modeled throughout the weekend.
After each activity, the trainees are asked to identify the different teaching moves and reflect on both the practicalities and rationale of each through a pedagogical device we call ‘chart groups.’ In chart groups, the trainees work collaboratively to list the what, the how, and the why of each teaching move. The trainees work in these chart groups throughout the weekend and present their own “Top 10 Teaching Tips” on the last day. The trainees are then encouraged to incorporate their tips into their own practice lessons. These lessons are designed and implemented by trainees working in pairs with small groups of their peers as the student audience. The trainees find the experience of delivering their own lessons to be transformative in both understanding the practical demands of teaching and in their own confidence in their ability to develop and execute a lesson. After each practice lesson, the trainees are asked to first reflect on their own lesson and then their peers have an opportunity to provide constructive feedback. 
Especially given the compressed nature of their teacher training during Orientation weekend, building trainee comfort with their newfound skills is a central objective and both facilitators and peers focus primarily on the positive aspects of each practice lesson. This process of seeing effective learner-centered education modeled, collectively reflecting on the different teaching moves, and then working collaboratively to both execute and discuss a practice lesson equips the trainees with the capacity to effectuate successful learner-centered lessons and the enthusiasm to match. 



D) Building Community
The final theme of the Street Law Orientation weekend focuses on the importance of building community in the classroom, between facilitators and trainees, and within the trainee group. Sometimes reduced to the adage “students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” the connection between community building and effective teaching and learning cannot be overstated. Building this community is a central objective of the Orientation weekend and the Street Law approach is grounded in a well-documented body of research around best practices in teaching and learning broadly and in teacher training specifically. We define what we mean by community, discuss the benefits of community, and explain how community is created before turning to the specifics of the Street Law approach.
Within the education space, a community can be defined as a collection of individual learners with shared practices, beliefs, and understandings who collectively participate in the pursuit of a common goal.[footnoteRef:88] A welcoming community, or positive learning environment, is characterized by mutual interdependence, meaningful caring and supportive relationships, and the creation of a safe space where individuals feel valued and heard.[footnoteRef:89] Members of this group, classroom, or school community understand both why the community exists and the purpose of this community.[footnoteRef:90] Community formation occurs when individuals share an experience that creates and reinforces a group identity and provides feelings of connectedness and belonging to members of this learning community.[footnoteRef:91] [88:  Battistich, V., Solomon, D., Watson, M., & Schaps, E. (1997). Caring school communities. Educational psychologist, 32(3), 137-151; Barab, S. A., & Duffy, T. (2000). From practice fields to communities of practice. Theoretical foundations of learning environments, 1(1), 25-55.]  [89:  Battistich, V., Solomon, D., Watson, M., & Schaps, E. (1997). Caring school communities. Educational psychologist, 32(3), 137-151; Flanagan, C., Stoppa, T., Syvertsen, A.K., & Stout, M. (2010). Schools and Social Trust. In L. Sherrod, J. Torney-Purta, & C. Flanagan (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth (307-330). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.]  [90:  Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press; Barab, S. A., MaKinster, J., & Scheckler, R. (2004). Characterizing system dualities: Building online community. Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning, 53-90.]  [91:  Barab, S. A., & Duffy, T. (2000). From practice fields to communities of practice. Theoretical foundations of learning environments, 1(1), 25-55; Flanagan, C., Stoppa, T., Syvertsen, A.K., & Stout, M. (2010). Schools and Social Trust. In L. Sherrod, J. Torney-Purta, & C. Flanagan (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth (307-330). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.] 

Establishing and supporting a positive learning community or climate leads to significant and interconnected pro-social academic, behavioral, and social outcomes. Students who experience positive learning environments perform better academically, are more open to learning, and are more likely to trust the knowledge and information shared by the teacher.[footnoteRef:92] Students who feel cared for and emotionally supported in their learning communities are more motivated, engaged, and enthusiastic.[footnoteRef:93] These students put forth more effort, participate more frequently, and attend and persist in the learning process to a greater degree that students who don’t share a sense of community.[footnoteRef:94] The relationships and peer and teacher support that characterize supportive and safe learning communities create a sense of belonging that leads to less intragroup competitiveness, heightened cooperation, increased willingness to take risks, and a more positive attitude towards school and learning.[footnoteRef:95] [92:  Berkowitz, R., Moore, H., Astor, R. A., & Benbenishty, R. (2016). A Research Synthesis of the Associations Between Socioeconomic Background, Inequality, School Climate, and Academic Achievement. Review of Educational Research, 0034654316669821; Furrer, C., & Skinner, E. (2003). Sense of relatedness as a factor in children's academic engagement and performance. Journal of educational psychology, 95(1), 148; Bryk, A., & Schneider, B. (2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation; Raider-Roth, M. (2005). Trusting What You Know: The High Stakes of Classroom Relationships. Indianapolis, IN: Jossey-Bass; Olson, Kirke (2014). The Invisible Classroom: Relationships, Neuroscience, & Mindfulness in School. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Ltd.]  [93:  Tschannen-Moran, M. (2014). The interconnectivity of trust in schools. In Van Maele, D., Van Houtte, M., & Forsyth, P.B. (Eds.) Trust and school life (pp. 57-83). New York, NY: Springer; Urdan, T., & Schoenfelder, E. (2006). Classroom effects on student motivation: Goal structures, social relationships, and competence beliefs. Journal of school psychology, 44(5), 331- 349.]  [94:  Ruzek, E. A., Hafen, C. A., Allen, J. P., Gregory, A., Mikami, A. Y., & Pianta, R. C. (2016). How teacher emotional support motivates students: The mediating roles of perceived peer relatedness, autonomy support, and competence. Learning and Instruction, 42, 95-103; Furrer, C., & Skinner, E. (2003). Sense of relatedness as a factor in children's academic engagement and performance. Journal of educational psychology, 95(1), 148; Urdan, T., & Schoenfelder, E. (2006). Classroom effects on student motivation: Goal structures, social relationships, and competence beliefs. Journal of school psychology, 44(5), 331- 349; Klem, A. M., & Connell, J. P. (2004). Relationships matter: Linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement. Journal of school health, 74(7), 262-273.]  [95:  Gillen-O’Neel, C., & Fuligni, A. (2013). A longitudinal study of school belonging and academic motivation across high school. Child development, 84(2), 678-692; Furrer, C., & Skinner, E. (2003). Sense of relatedness as a factor in children's academic engagement and performance. Journal of educational psychology, 95(1), 148; Klem, A. M., & Connell, J. P. (2004). Relationships matter: Linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement. Journal of school health, 74(7), 262-273; Tschannen-Moran, M. (2014). The interconnectivity of trust in schools. In Van Maele, D., Van Houtte, M., & Forsyth, P.B. (Eds.) Trust and school life (pp. 57-83). New York, NY: Springer; Wentzel, K. R. (1997). Student motivation in middle school: The role of perceived pedagogical caring. Journal of educational psychology, 89(3), 411.] 

The value and importance of creating a positive and safe learning community also applies to the process of educating the individuals who bear primary responsibility for shaping this climate-teachers. Teachers who participate in positive learning communities during their teacher training also exhibit the impactful academic, behavioral, and social outcomes outlined above.[footnoteRef:96] Additionally, teacher training models that intentionally create communities, or cohorts, of novice teachers produce more confident and effective teachers who are more likely to seek and share resources, more likely to feel a sense of collective responsibility, and more likely to continue to grow and develop as teachers even beyond the initial shared experience.[footnoteRef:97] Significantly, the benefits of a teacher training model that encourages and promotes community don’t end with the teacher training process. Teachers who learn in communities gain an appreciation for both the importance of learning communities and the steps needed to create these communities, a mindset and skillset that later translate into their own practices and the communities they will build in their own classrooms.[footnoteRef:98] [96:  Beck, C., & Kosnik, C. (2001). From cohort to community in a preservice teacher education program. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(8), 925-948; Wenger, E., & Lave, J. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.]  [97:  Wenger, E., & Lave, J. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Beck, C., & Kosnik, C. (2001). From cohort to community in a preservice teacher education program. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(8), 925-948; Hadar, L., & Brody, D. (2010). From isolation to symphonic harmony: Building a professional development community among teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(8), 1641-1651; Berry, B., Daughtrey, A., & Wieder, A. (2010). Preparing to Lead an Effective Classroom: The Role of Teacher Training and Professional Development Programs. Center For Teaching Quality.]  [98:  Catalano, R. F., Oesterle, S., Fleming, C. B., & Hawkins, J. D. (2004). The importance of bonding to school for healthy development: Findings from the Social Development Research Group. Journal of School Health, 74(7), 252-261; Beck, C., & Kosnik, C. (2001). From cohort to community in a preservice teacher education program. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(8), 925-948.] 

Community does not happen by accident. Building a positive learning community involves an intentionality around structure, relationships, and pedagogy. To form a community, there must first be a shared experience and a common purpose that give rise to a group identity.[footnoteRef:99] Within schools and learning environments, these structural underpinnings typically exist when a group such as class of students—or cohort of teachers in training—comes together in one place to learn about a subject or to practice and acquire a set of skills with an established learning objective. Supportive and caring relationships are formed by respecting individual differences, demonstrating and practicing genuine care for the wellbeing of others, and allowing for the sharing of individual opinions and experiences.[footnoteRef:100] Giving students the opportunity to get to know one another, to share about their own backgrounds, and to listen to the views and viewpoints of others are techniques that help build the trust and safe space elements of community.[footnoteRef:101] Specific pedagogical practices that help build community include giving students autonomy and decision-making authority, structured problem-solving tasks that require cooperative and small group work, and providing multiple opportunities for interaction, discussion, and sharing.[footnoteRef:102] [99:  Barab, S. A., & Duffy, T. (2000). From practice fields to communities of practice. Theoretical foundations of learning environments, 1(1), 25-55.]  [100:  Flanagan, C., Stoppa, T., Syvertsen, A.K., & Stout, M. (2010). Schools and Social Trust. In L. Sherrod, J. Torney-Purta, & C. Flanagan (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth (307-330). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; Arbaugh, J. B., & Garrison, D. R. (2007). Researching the community of inquiry framework: Review, issues and future directions. The Internet and Higher Education, 10, 157-172; Paloff, R., & Pratt. K, (2001). Building learning communities in cyberspace: Effective strategies for the online classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass; Klem, A. M., & Connell, J. P. (2004). Relationships matter: Linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement. Journal of school health, 74(7), 262-273; Wentzel, K. R. (1997). Student motivation in middle school: The role of perceived pedagogical caring. Journal of educational psychology, 89(3), 411]  [101:  Klem, A. M., & Connell, J. P. (2004). Relationships matter: Linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement. Journal of school health, 74(7), 262-273; Hadar, L., & Brody, D. (2010). From isolation to symphonic harmony: Building a professional development community among teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(8), 1641-1651; Allen, J., Gregory, A., Mikami, A., Lun, J., Hamre, B., & Pianta, R. (2013). Observations of effective teacher-student interactions in secondary school classrooms: Predicting student achievement with the classroom assessment scoring system-secondary. School Psychology Review, 42(1), 76.]  [102:  Catalano, R. F., Oesterle, S., Fleming, C. B., & Hawkins, J. D. (2004). The importance of bonding to school for healthy development: Findings from the Social Development Research Group. Journal of School Health, 74(7), 252-261; Goodenow, C. (1993). Classroom belonging among early adolescent students’ relationships to motivation and achievement. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 13(1), 21-43; Ruzek, E. A., Hafen, C. A., Allen, J. P., Gregory, A., Mikami, A. Y., & Pianta, R. C. (2016). How teacher emotional support motivates students: The mediating roles of perceived peer relatedness, autonomy support, and competence. Learning and Instruction, 42, 95-103] 

Over the course of the Street Law Orientation weekend, the trainees move from a collection of individuals loosely familiar with each other and the concept of Street Law to a cohesive and supportive community marked by a sense of cooperation and connectedness. The shared experience, coming together to spend a long weekend talking, learning, and interacting around a common purpose, forges a group identity and sense of belonging as Street Law teachers. Relationships are intentionally cultivated from the outset as trainees learn each other’s names and rotate through three different small groups on the first night alone. In Saturday morning’s opening session, facilitators use personal pictures to share their individual stories of self and then ask trainees to do likewise by choosing a picture from their phones and sharing how this picture represents home or family with members of their small group. The presentation and sharing of these pictures—and the accompanying laughter, vulnerability, and emotion—helps quickly build relationships between both the facilitators and trainees and among the trainees. What might have been a quiet and reserved group on Friday night quickly evolves into a talkative and collaborative collection by the close of this Saturday morning session.
As trainees move through their different groups over the course of the weekend, each interactive activity is designed to give trainees the chance to discuss and make decisions and the opportunity to explain their views, both within their small groups and within the larger group. Trainees problem solve in teams and divergent views are encouraged and supported. A slideshow of pictures showing trainees talking, laughing, and interacting during the day’s activities are shown at the beginning of the following day. Trainees work in pairs to design their practice teaching lesson and the feedback and support trainees receive during the ensuing peer debrief are intentionally structured to build confidence and highlight the positive elements of each practice lesson. The closing Quaker reflection is the biggest testament to the community built during the Street Law Orientation weekend, however. Many trainees explicitly commented on the sense of trust, belonging, and connectedness they now feel as part of this group and in both Ireland and Scotland, at least one trainee mentioned how they didn’t think it was possible to build such a tight community in such a short time . . . but were proven wrong.

IV. Introducing Street Law in Ireland and Scotland
Despite the rapid spread of Street Law within the United States, global adoption of the Street Law model has been sporadic and generally proceeded at a significantly slower pace. The reasons for this difference are multiple and include the relatively late emergence of a global clinical movement for diffusion and dissemination of best practices, the absence of a strong body of research supporting the model, and a perceived incompatibility between legal systems and priorities in the United States and those across the globe. In fact, it was only through a combination of serendipitous timing and visionary entrepreneurship that Street Law was introduced to the Law Societies of Ireland and Scotland. We hope that through the presentation of the research base, supra, and the capacity of Street Law to promote and advance universal legal education goals and principles, infra, to change this trend.

A) Introduction of Street Law at the Law Society of Ireland 
Freda Grealy, Head of the Diploma Center at the Law Society of Ireland, first encountered Street Law when she met Professor Richard Roe at an international conference and was inspired by his stories around the transformative power of Street Law. Roe has been Director of the Street Law Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center since 1983 and is one of Street Law’s most experienced and renowned practitioners. Grealy subsequently observed the work of Roe and his clinical teaching fellows as they led training sessions with Georgetown law students and then supported those students as they implemented the Street Law Program at different high schools throughout Washington, D.C. It was unlike any law teaching that Grealy had seen before; there was energy and passion by both the instructors and the students around formidable legal issues. As the instructors challenged their students’ notions of law and justice and encouraged their students to reflect on the significance of the law, the instructors also prompted students to engage with the question of why they were interested in law and possible future careers as lawyers.
For a number of reasons, it appeared that the Street Law methodology would be a good fit for trainees at the Law Society of Ireland and would resonate with the core objectives of the Law Society. The Law Society of Ireland, established in 1773, is the educational, representative and regulatory body of the solicitors’ profession in Ireland, and currently the exclusive provider of training programs for solicitors. There are two main elements comprising the solicitor professional training regime in Ireland: one is the vocational and professional legal educational element, conducted at the Law Society of Ireland; the other is the in-firm training period conducted in the training firm. During this two-year period when trainees are preparing to be solicitors, trainees rotate between the Law Society, where they take academic and skills-based courses as part of their Professional Practice Courses, and their law firm or legal organization placements. 
While at the Law Society, in addition to the goal of teaching trainees the needed legal skills, the Law Society seeks to instill in trainees a commitment to increasing access to legal education and the legal profession, develop and awareness and exposure around the importance of pro bono legal services, and foster an ethos of public service within the legal profession. Street Law offers a meaningful way to accomplish these goals while both building community among the trainee cohort and providing the trainees with meaningful experiential learning. Additionally, because Street Law does not compete with solicitors for clients or business while helping trainees develop their professional identities and presentation and planning skills, the program has been warmly embraced by legal professionals and future employers. The Street Law program also helps build relationships between the Law Society and local universities and college access programs, thus strengthening the reach of the Law Society and the appeal of the legal profession.
With the support of the Director of Education, the Law Society piloted the program with selected volunteers teaching a six-week “Street Law” course to secondary school students in 2013. The Law Society partnered with 13 secondary schools who are designated disadvantaged DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) schools in Dublin.[footnoteRef:103] Now in its fourth year, Street Law continues to grow in popularity. In 2016, 41 Professional Practice Course I trainees (PPC I) were chosen to participate in the program from more than 75 applicants. The program has a structured framework where trainees are paired up before the Orientation weekend, with each pair knowing they will lead eight teaching sessions across the Street Law semester at one of the designated secondary schools. For many schools, the culminating program event is a Mock Trial hearing, sponsored by the Law Society and sometimes presided over by a real judge in the Criminal Courts of Justice. From an assessment point of view, the trainees are obliged to complete various tasks that they post on the online course platform including sharing a lesson plan, posting regular reflections on their teaching experiences and a final assignment. On completion, trainee graduates of the Street Law program are awarded Certificates which are presented at a formal conferring ceremony attended by all partners and collaborators and presided over by a High Court Judge.  [103:  The Law Society of Ireland focuses on secondary school students in their Transition Year. The Transition Year is a bridge year between junior and senior cycles in secondary school “Mission - To promote the personal, social, educational and vocational development of pupils and to prepare them for their role as autonomous, participative, and responsible members of society.” Department of Education and Science (1995).  Transition Year- Guidelines for Schools. Retrieved from https://www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Information/Curriculum-and-Syllabus/Transition-Year-/ty_transition_year_school_guidelines.pdf] 

The Street Law Program has enjoyed tremendous popularity and a marked growth in interest in Ireland for several reasons. First, the methodology works. Secondary school students enjoy discussing and debating, forming and sharing their opinion, and learning from their peers as well as their law student instructors. Second, Street Law develops a host of critical skills in the students.[footnoteRef:104] Street Law focuses on areas of the law that are of interest and relevance to students and aims to develop their advocacy and public speaking skills and provide them with a foundation in the principles of democracy. Third, Street Law makes the law seem much more accessible and less impersonal. The connections that occur outside of the pure teaching between trainee and student are powerful; these work to socialize and encourage students from disadvantaged groups to think that they too can be lawyers and show them the positive side to the law. The Law Society goes on to invite the students to the Law Society campus and demonstrates to the students that they too have the potential to go and study law if they wish.  [104:  Arthurs, S. (2015). Street Law: Creating Tomorrow’s Citizens Today. Lewis & Clark Law Review, 19(4), 925-961.] 

Fourth, Street Law is consistent with the Law Society’s mission of public outreach, developing legal skills and a service orientation in young lawyers, and promoting a positive image of solicitors in the general community. A testament to the success of Street Law in this regard was the recent focus on Street Law during an episode of “Nationwide,” a popular national program on Irish television station RTE. During this segment, camera crews followed trainees into a local school and highlighted the work of the Street Law trainees and students as they demonstrated learner-centered lessons and the culminating Mock Trial.  
Finally, Street Law has the potential to bring many disparate groups of students and trainers together. In addition to teaching in secondary school, each year the Law Society has identified new synergies, from collaborating with organizations such as Solas[footnoteRef:105] and working with detainees in Wheatfield Prison, to working with community service organizations such as Public Interest Law Alliance (PILA) and Future Voices[footnoteRef:106] to assist a group of youths in making a submission to the Law Reform Commission on proposed cyber-bullying legislation. In addition, a number of Street Law trainees have worked with the Irish Rule of Law International (IRLI)[footnoteRef:107] and NGOs such as Bridges Across Borders South East Asia Community Legal Education (BABSEACLE)[footnoteRef:108] to partner in Street Law community teaching initiatives in Myanmar. The Street Law Orientation weekend is the launching pad for all of these projects as trainees who undergo the Orientation are exposed to how clinical legal education intersects with social justice, resulting in an increased interest and participation from trainees in volunteering further. [105:  Solas HomePage. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2016, from http://www1.solas.ie/ ]  [106:  Vision. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2016, from http://www.futurevoicesireland.org/ ]  [107:  Irish Rule of Law International. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2016, from http://irishruleoflaw.ie/ ]  [108:  BABSEA-CLE - Home. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2016, from https://www.babseacle.org/ ] 

The Orientation weekend is a powerful catalyst for the learning and growth that happens over the course of the program. For Street Law trainees, the Orientation weekend and the months that follow provide many opportunities for personal and professional development. The Orientation weekend occurs during a pivotal time in the development of the young lawyers, with fantastic potential to harness the enthusiasm of neophyte trainees and their motivation to put their legal knowledge to good use. In addition to the more obvious impact on skills and knowledge of trainees, Street law educates them about the contribution and impact they can make to the community as solicitors by volunteering their time, sharing their knowledge, and modeling civic professionalism. This realization can assist them in developing and aligning with a more positive professional identity as lawyers, a valuable lesson which can support them at times when the challenges of their training period may cause them to doubt their professional worth or the contribution they can make.
B) Introduction of Street Law at the Law Society of Scotland
Rob Marrs, Head of Education at the Law Society of Scotland (LSS), first became interested in the Street Law program when a staff member attended a training at the Georgetown University Law Center, and suggested that Street Law might reinforce and promote core objectives of the Law Society of Scotland. Serendipitously, the Law Society of Ireland (LSI) was hosting its initial training in Dublin a short time later and two LSS staffers attended. Both were extremely impressed with the program and realized that Street Law would help meet some of LSS’s statutory and internal objectives.
The Law Society of Scotland was established in 1949 as the professional body for Scottish solicitors. The core objectives of the Law Society are to represent the solicitor profession in Scotland and to represent the public in relation to this profession. The Legal Services (Scotland) Act of 2010 supplemented these broad goals with an explicit objective to promote and ensure equal opportunities within the legal profession for all people, regardless of background. A LSS research project, Fair Access to the Legal Profession,[footnoteRef:109] identified the single greatest barrier to an individual from a low-income background becoming a solicitor was gaining access to an accredited legal education program. The Society realized that outreach and promotion of legal education in schools in low-income communities would be a powerful tool in encouraging students from these communities to study law. Additionally, the Law Society had long sought to improve its public legal education program and Street Law offered the unique opportunity to accomplish both goals. Additionally, the chance to promote public service while giving law students practical training and enhanced legal knowledge and presentation skills appealed to Law Society leadership and members. [109:  Marrs, R., & Meighan, D. (2014) Fair Access to the Legal Profession. The Law Society of Scotland. Retrieved from https://www.lawscot.org.uk/media/295065/fair-access-for-publication-300114.pdf.] 

The year after the LSS staffers attended the Dublin training, LSS liaised closely with colleagues from Georgetown and from LSI to launch the first Scottish program. Facilitators and two trainees from the Law Society of Ireland supported remotely by two Georgetown Street facilitators, delivered the first training weekend to twenty law school trainees. These students were then paired up and delivered a six lesson program to Scottish state schools. The students themselves designed and delivered the lessons as part of the curriculum.
The main focus throughout has always been on the secondary school pupils. The program operates in state schools and focuses primarily on schools that have not traditionally sent many pupils to university. During the 2014 academic year, the program started with 34 classes in 25 schools. These were based in and around the three largest cities in Scotland (Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen). The next year, the Law Society worked with more than 50 classes in over 30 schools. As well as returning to the overwhelming majority of schools from the previous year, the LSS is working with new schools in each of those cities and has since expanded into Dundee, Paisley and Stirling.
The Street Law program in Scotland has also experienced a marked increase in popularity at the Law Society, heightened student interest, and new demand from local schools for several reasons. First, the methodology resonates strongly with the themes in Curriculum for Excellence,[footnoteRef:110] particularly as part of the Crime and the Law module within the Modern Studies course. Second, the pupils enjoy the methodology which places them at the center of legal discussion and debates. Third, Street Law’s focus on areas of law that are of interest to the pupils (often because of discussion between Street Lawyers, teachers and pupils) makes the lessons hyper-relevant to all in the class. Fourth, Street Law inculcates a number of critical skills such as advocacy, negotiation, public speaking and critical thinking. Fifth, Street Law brings the law to life and more obviously relevant to young people in Scotland. Sixth, it shows the positive side of the law and introduces the idea of social activism (i.e. what the law ought to be as well as what the law is). Seventh, Street Law helps develop the skills of new lawyers who – in turn – connect with school pupils. Eighth, there has been a considerable upsurge in interest in the law in Scotland–particularly in constitutional and public administrative law–since the referendum on Scottish independence in September 2014 and the 2016 referendum on the United Kingdom’s continued membership in the European Union. [110:  Curriculum for Excellence is the national curriculum for Scottish schools for learners from age 3 to 18. Curriculum for Excellence identified the four key purposes of education; those that enable young people to become ‘successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens, and effective contributors’. 
More information can be found here: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/learningandteaching/thecurriculum/] 

The success of the Street Law program in Scotland has not gone unnoticed. On February 24th 2017, the Law Society of Scotland’s Street Law program won the European Association Excellence Award for Best Training Initiative. The awards recognize excellence in various categories by trade associations and professional bodies across Europe. The Street Law program was selected from more than 60 finalists to receive the prestigious award and the Law Society expects that this award will only increase demand and interest in the program.

V. Orientation weekend
The sections that follow will describe the recent trainings hosted by the Law Societies of Ireland and Scotland, with particular focus on the 2015 workshops and their evaluations. The trainings consist of a series of interactive activities designed to build both law-related/civic content and skills as well as best practices of learner-centered teaching.  These activities are arranged in parallel trajectories that unfold with increasing levels of complexity.  Through engaging in the activities and then experiencing and reflecting on the law-related and methodological value of each successive activity, trainees gain the invaluable opportunity to synthesize for themselves the principles of effective learning and teaching based on their own experiences, through the “inside view.”  
The following sections will first discuss the activities’ content and methods of each activity. We then reflect on how each activity connects to the broader themes of building belief, capacity, and community. Throughout the trajectory, we aspire to demonstrate the principles and practices the Law Society of Ireland captured in the slogan on the T-shirts awarded to trainees: “Talk Less; Teach More.”
A) Stages in the Trajectory (Spoiler Alert: We would never spell this out in a training)
	1)  Foundation: Valuing Student Ideas.  After the sparest of introductions, we plunge into an entirely open-ended negotiation based only on participants’ opinions in which there is no correct answer, ‘Who Gets the Heart?’. The idea is to give participants the experience that we welcome their ideas and that it will be the participants’ expression of their insights into the activities, not the instructors, that will drive the training.  As in all subsequent stages, the participants will examine and discuss both the content to be learned and methods employed.
	2)  Building Student Voices. The second activity, ‘Aliens’, builds on the first by adding a level of complexity by generating a debate on prioritizing basic human rights. We do not define these rights; rather, the participants draw upon their prior knowledge or understanding of the rights. Nor do we prescribe how to go about prioritizing them. The real lesson of the activity is not the ranking of the rights but the variety of the processes and discourse skills the participants use in coming to agreement. Participants discover the value of acting as a discourse community.
	3) Sharing Stories and Values:  In this session, facilitators and trainees share parts of their stories and values pertaining to their involvement in the training.
	4)  Adding Analytical Reasoning: In the third activity, ‘Should It Be a Crime?’, also based entirely on participants’ opinions and having no correct answers, participants decide whether or not their hypothetical law reform commission will treat a number of carefully chosen and provocative situations as criminal or not.  As participants employ analytical reasoning in their discourse communities, they not only learn fundamental principles of criminal law but also uncover a methodological framework for developing learning objectives. 
	5) Inviting Student Questions:  The fourth stage in the trajectory adds an essential but often underutilized dimension to teaching – building a lesson on student questions, where student imagination and questions drive the activity.  In this training, the facilitators offered three alternative activities, subdividing the participants into three subgroups.  Each of these activities, two case studies and a skill building activity, essentially draw on participant questions to determine guilt or innocence or solve a problem.  Participants review both the skills and the methodology of questions.
	6) Integrating Facts and Law through Advocacy:  The fifth stage increases the levels of complexity and interactivity still further by having the participants play the roles of plaintiffs, defendants or judges in mini mock trials. The fact pattern is engaging, short yet complex, including brief stipulated facts and witness statements, evidence, and law. The activity can be accomplished through participants’ present ability and knowledge; no training in forms of questions or procedures is necessary.  Afterwards in the group as a whole, participants examine outcomes, strategies, skills and methodologies.
	7) Culminating Activity: Planning and Teaching Practice Lessons. Now, participants are rearranged into subgroups, then paired and asked to design and then teach to the others in the subgroup short lessons of their own that draw on the methodologies and experiences of the previous two days. Facilitators debrief these lessons with a focus on the positive attributes of the lesson plans and methods employed, not on the individual performances.
	8) Summary, Review and Evaluation: The training concludes with activities that generate participants’ summaries, reviews and assessments of the training and their accomplishments.
	Supplementary Pedagogical Substantive Sessions: Between several of the activities comprising the cognitive and expressive trajectory, the participants review and synthesize the learning principles of each stage, and facilitators provide at various points will introduce additional learning strategies, discussions of learning theory and practice, lesson design, personal experiences, and practical tips.  In longer trainings, facilitators may also provide some instruction on lesson design assessment, classroom management, and guide participants through their own first experiences with this process.
Pictures from the 2015 orientation workshops showing participants engaged in each of these activities are freely available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/141482972@N07/. These pictures will hopefully provide practitioners seeking to replicate or modify these activities with examples of how students at different institutions interacted during our sessions.[footnoteRef:111] [111:  For example, the annual orientation for law students at Georgetown Law Center has grown to five days and includes team building and other activities.  In past years, the fall Georgetown Street Law orientation has sometimes included a longer mock trial to build the awareness of our law students of what the program builds to in the culminating experience of the spring semester of the program.] 


B) Themes: Belief, Capacity and Community
As introduced above, woven throughout the Orientation activities and lessons are the core themes of Belief, Capacity, and Community. Our goal is that by the end of the weekend our trainees will develop (1) Belief in the learner centered educational methodology, (2) the Capacity to design engaging and stimulating lesson plans that tie concretely to legal substance, and (3) an understanding of the importance of Community—both amongst the trainees themselves and the high school students in their classrooms.[footnoteRef:112] [112:  We have found these themes to be useful as an overall structure for the training.  However, our training could be described by other themes, such as “experiencing, reflecting, and creating.” The key is for the facilitators to organize the training around core themes aligned with the objectives of the training and best teaching practices.] 

Developing Belief in the learner centered teaching methodology is one of our primary goals over the Orientation weekend because the concept at the heart of Street Law is to provide an opportunity for students and trainees to think critically about the law, the societal context that gave rise to our legal system, and their own role within this legal system. In order to build and deliver the lessons that will help students accomplish these tasks, trainees must first experience for themselves the effectiveness of the methodology. 
As facilitators we are constantly modeling what we expect the trainees will adopt and bring to their own classrooms. Just as facilitators create the opportunity to think critically about the law through lessons that pull trainees into discussion, debate, analysis, comparison, and evaluation, we want trainees to do the same with their students. We do this by intentionally designing lesson plans that have us “talking less and teaching more.” We are facilitators of student interaction and, ideally, take a moderator’s role as students dissect the laws upon which our society is built. Strong lessons, that truly inspire and engage students, take time to write. They require substantive and methodological skill and personal investment and are more complex to plan for than a traditional lecture-based lesson. Our goal is that trainees leave Orientation believing in the Street Law teaching methodology so that they will dedicate the time necessary to design innovative, engaging lesson plans for their high school students. 
Our second core theme is Capacity, because belief alone is not enough. Trainees must have the ability to design lessons on their own that stimulate high cognitive critical thinking skills, in order to carry the heart of Street Law into their classrooms. Developing and implementing engaging lesson plans is a skillset that is developed throughout the semester as trainees flex their muscles to create innovative lessons and the ability to reflect on and improve those first iterations. Conventional training typically provides lesson plan templates and list of possible strategies and desired outcomes, but Street Law training does more-by first experiencing the weekend Orientation as learners themselves, the trainees come to understand the theory and pedagogy in order to then design and conduct their own high quality lessons.
Valuing Community is our final core theme for the weekend. Community is important both within the cohort of trainees and within each individual secondary school classroom. Relationships amongst the trainees provide for an environment where individuals feel comfortable sharing lesson plans and resources—which will help trainees to mutually support one another and share the extra weight of planning for class. Within each secondary school classroom, a strong sense of community, acceptance, and respect contributes to creating the space needed for students to challenge laws and voice their true opinions, especially when those opinions go against the grain of what is traditionally accepted. Students are more ready, able, and willing to learn in classroom environments where they feel valued and comfortable. Creating these welcoming classroom communities is particularly important when so much of the Street Law methodology relies on participatory activities and peer learning.
We develop Belief in the Street Law methodology and Capacity in our future trainees through the guided debrief conversations and reflective exercises we build into the activities throughout the Orientation weekend to foster critical reflection. The activities are samples of exemplary Street Law activities in a trajectory of increasing legal, cognitive and expressive complexity. We debrief them first substantively, modeling as we would do in a regular classroom, then methodologically, from the point of view of teaching and learning practice, generating principles of good teaching. These principles are synthesized from the trainees’ experiences and observations. We refrain from stating them ourselves. For many of the orientation activities we ask our trainees to analyze what we did during the lesson, why we executed it that way, and how we facilitated it. We develop Community by modeling techniques that initiate meaningful, natural, human interaction. From the first minutes of the training through the closing sessions, trainees are consistently invited to share their thoughts and opinions to help deepen everyone’s experience. The goal is to construct spaces where natural connections can be forged and relationships can begin to flourish.

VI. Nuts and Bolts 
A) Friday Evening
Foundation: Valuing Student Ideas: Who Gets the Heart?
The first evening of the training sets the tone of learner-centeredness by immediately engaging in an activity that generates lively discourse among the trainees. Rather than beginning with an outline of the training, a lecture about methodology, or a description of Street Law, we begin as a new Street Law class begins: by doing. The facilitators model the “do first, unpack later” framework espoused by Street Law in order to first generate interest and excitement around a law-related activity and then to backwards map the learning and the processes that facilitated that learning.
After brief introductions of the facilitators, one facilitator groups the trainees into small groups of 4-5 to begin the ‘Who Gets the Heart?’ simulation. Once in groups, the facilitator informs the groups that each group is a transplant committee that must quickly determine who among the listed candidates should receive the one available heart. See Appendix I. Trainees are informed that the whole group must agree on the decision.
After making the decision, the facilitator asks each group to share out their chosen patient and the reasons for their decisions. Then the facilitator distributes additional facts to some members of the groups or asks different group members to role-play as one of the candidates seeking a heart. These modifications speak to the “character” of the trainees and are meant to create tensions or difficulties in the decision-making process, as well as helping the participants develop multiple perspective skills. See Appendix II.  
Again, allowing for further student discussion the facilitator asks the groups to share out their decisions, the reasons why they made their selections, and the criteria and process they used in coming to their decision. Trainees may choose whether to share their additional facts and how they influenced (or did not influence) this second round of decision-making. The facilitator typically brings out the diversity of the approaches, ranging from votes to lotteries. 
At this point, the facilitator calls “timeout” on the simulation and debriefs the session from a teacher’s point of view, on the methodology. As will become pattern over the course of the weekend, this debrief is structured around the following three prompts:
1) WHAT did we do? 
2)  HOW did we do it?
3) WHY did we do it?  
The What question gets at the substance, topic, or objective of the activity. The How question illuminates the techniques, or “teaching moves” we used to help the trainees discover the substance. The Why gets to the root of the methodology and the intentionality behind each component of the activity. The methodology and learning principles developed are discussed in greater detail below.

Building Student Voices: Aliens
The second activity begins with a traditional lecture, something the trainees are too inexperienced to recognize as counter to Street Law’s core values. Fortunately, this charade continues for only a few moments until the facilitator is interrupted by a ringing phone. The facilitator informs the group in a dramatic fashion that she has received information that the planet has been invaded by aliens (either in present day or at some point in the future). She tells everyone that while the aliens are friendly enough, they have decided that we have too many rights. In light of the aliens’ overwhelming firepower and our desire to live in peace, we decide to accommodate the aliens’ request that we pare down our rights.  
The facilitator splits the trainees into groups of four to five. Each group is given 15 slips of paper, one for each of 15 rights provided for under the host country’s constitution. See Appendix III. The trainees are then asked to choose, as a group, four rights they are willing to give up to the aliens. The facilitator physically collects the four rights each group has decided to surrender. Without discussion, the trainees are then informed that the aliens are still unsatisfied and that the aliens want each group to give up four more rights from their remaining eleven. The facilitator supports the activity with a creative narrative for human compliance with the alien demands-and severe consequences for non-compliance. This process is repeated until each group has only three rights remaining. The facilitator then asks a representative from each group to come forward and record their group’s three remaining rights on a chart.
Each representative is given 60-90 seconds each to tell the entire group which rights they have chosen and why they have chosen them. The facilitator then recognizes the disagreements between each group and instructs the representatives that they must come to a new, shared agreement under which the entire group chooses to preserve the same three rights. No instructions are given as to how the representatives must make this decision. Group members who are not directly involved in the process are prompted to watch the proceedings and make observations around group, gender, and personality dynamics.
When the representatives eventually do wade through the bounded anarchy, occasional shouting, and different decision-making efforts to reach an agreement (or fail to reach an agreement in the allotted time, as is sometimes the case), the agreement and the underlying reasons are shared publicly. The facilitator then leads a debrief of the entire exercise from both the participants’ and teacher’s point of view. Trainees are asked how they decided on which rights to preserve and, separately, on how they decided to resolve different opinions within their small group. Trainees are encouraged to share their reasoning around both decision making processes and to connect this reasoning with their broader understanding of the law and the role it plays in society. Key themes we seek to bring out from this exercise are foundational principles of democratic decision-making such as negotiation, listening, persuasion and compromise, and the recognition and valuing of individual voice within group processes.
The Street Law training begins building belief, capacity, and community at its outset through modeling. Actually engaging in the activities, as opposed to being told how to teach them, leads trainees to believe in the methodology, gives them a greater capacity to employ the methodology, and begins to create a sense of community among the trainees. The Friday evening activities are intentionally introductory in nature-we hope that students will leave the evening enthusiastic with their interest piqued and that they will be primed for the more in-depth exploration of methodology and pedagogy that comes on Saturday.  
The first modeled activity of the training, ‘Who Gets the Heart?’, begins to build community by randomly placing trainees in groups with other trainees they do not know well, a process that will be repeated several times over the course of the weekend. The trainees complete their negotiation based solely on their own opinions and value sets. Trainees are not required to have any knowledge beyond what they already possess, legal and otherwise, nor do they need to know one another. Since the activity requires them to interact and share their opinions, the trainees inherently begin to learn about one another through the simulation, building community within their small groups.
Sharing out responses to the entire group also grows the sense of community among the trainees. The facilitator creates a space where each group’s response is acknowledged and valued by the other groups. Posting the responses in a visible, central location signals to the groups that their responses are important and that the space is safe for sharing those responses. The trainees learn more about the group as a whole and begin to understand their peers’ opinions and values.
Belief and capacity begin to form in the metacognitive debrief of the ‘Who Gets the Heart?’ exercise. The What question allows trainees to see that complex legal concepts can be integrated into a highly engaging and interactive framework, building belief in the methodology. Belief is also built by demonstrating to the trainees that they did not just play a game, but they actually began to explore several complicated legal concepts in a rigorous manner. This understanding allows the trainees to begin to trust the methodology and encourages the trainees to deploy that methodology in their own classrooms.
Another dimension in the What category has to do with the observations and analysis of the trainees’ own experience. Trainees typically observe that participating in small groups creates safe space and multiplies the opportunities for participation and comments. They also observe that the trainees, not the facilitators, do the talking and thinking, drawing on their own knowledge, experiences and values. Moreover, trainees see the value of starting the training with an invitation to play an active role in the training, which is both novel and invigorating. This helps them see that this activity is a foundation of the trajectory of the training, setting the theme (not yet fully formed) of learner-centeredness. It also helps establish the pattern of the training of doing, describing, analyzing, and reflecting on both substantive and methodological aspects of the activities.  

Finally, without realizing it and without directions from the facilitators, the trainees establish rules of civic discourse to achieve the goals of the lesson, i.e., listening, talking in turns, responding, respecting others’ views, being flexible, compromising or standing firm, backing up opinions with reasons, etc.  Although not necessary for trainees accustomed to high level academic and civic discourse, this step is essential in classrooms where students are more used to being told how to act and what to think, to give them the experience of “self-government” by governing their own behavior without being told.
An additional essential component of the debrief for the trainees is a discussion of how the various skills exercised in the activity may be useful in developing lawyering abilities. Since the Street Law model not only provides public service to the ultimate student constituencies in schools, correctional, or community settings but also develops lawyering skills, the inclusion of this step in the debriefs throughout the training is valuable to building both capacity and belief among the trainees. It also provides a significant justification for Street Law’s role in the training of lawyers.
The How question of the debrief builds the trainees’ capacities for completing the exercise in their own classrooms. The process of deconstructing each exercise and identifying each of the individual parts of the exercise is a critical first step in building the trainees’ confidence in their ability to complete the same exercise in their own classrooms. Through the process of deconstructing the debrief conversation itself, trainees learn how to facilitate substantive reflective conversation which tie surface level actions to concrete legal principles.   
Lastly, the trainees discuss Why the exercise was done in the way it was done. The Why question builds capacity in the trainees. After only one simulation, the trainees begin to understand intentionality in lesson design, helping to build their capacities as classroom instructors. All of the techniques of the lesson are attached to a learning goal, thus helping the trainees to understand that the outcome was not just happenstance. The trainees’ capacity crystallizes much more quickly when they are allowed to experience the simulation as a student would, rather than simply being told that the simulation will accomplish particular goals.
An example of a What, How, Why that might develop from the ‘Who Gets the Heart?’ simulation is as follows:
Q:  What did we do?
A:   Reviewed a pool of candidates who needed a heart transplant and ranked them according to who we believed should get the one heart available for transplant. We each gave our own opinions on which candidate should get the heart and then came to a consensus as a group as to which patient should ultimately be saved. 

Q:  How did we do it?
A:  Divided us into groups; provided us with different facts about each candidate and required us to reach a unanimous decision

Q:  Why did we do it that way?  (Or, stated differently, why didn’t we do it in a traditional, teacher-centered way?)
A:  Just telling us about this activity would be much less interesting; we got to meet new people and share our own opinions; role-playing gave me a better understanding of how a person’s feelings or motivations might influence the way she approached a problem; I might not have had the same deep understanding of that concept if I’d just been told about it.

With ‘Aliens’, the opening and atmosphere is intended to build the trainee community and, in turn, allow the trainees to build that same community with high school students. The facilitator sets the stage with the entertaining alien invasion narrative. The levity of the hypothetical creates a space in which the trainees can discuss and evaluate fundamental rights without feeling as if they must be “right”—or bound to advocate for a certain right because of their own political and cultural persuasions. They may express opinions and test theories freely within the alien invasion simulation. 
‘Aliens’ is more complex than ‘Who Gets the Heart?’ in both its subject matter and procedure.  This increased complexity builds both belief and capacity.  The trainees’ belief in the methodology’s effectiveness is built by their ability to access more complex concepts.  The trainees build on the skills they gained in the prior simulation.  Moreover, the way in which the activity is conducted builds the trainees’ toolboxes of methods for teaching increasingly complex legal concepts to their own students.  Trainees experience new methods for grouping, sharing out responses, and unpacking the meaning of an activity. On the surface, the lesson is about rights, but equally or more important is the subtext of the lesson, “to engage the participants in democratic decision-making or deliberation without predetermined rules . . . to practice and then reflect on the deliberative process and the skills involved.”[footnoteRef:113] Aliens advances the evolution of the trainees as teachers (and their future students in turn as learners) and the development of their skills in civil discourse and self-government introduced in the ‘Who Gets the Heart?’ activity.  [113:  Roe, R.L. (2016) Valuing Student Speech Revisited, Klinika: Czasopismo Fundacji Uniwersyteckich Poradni Prawnych, Numer Specjalny, 21-24 at 22.] 

The debrief should not only bring out the positive qualities of the trainees’ deliberations but also congratulate and praise them for these qualities. In this way, the activities develop another essential component of the learner-centered approach, learning through positive feedback as compared to so-called “constructive criticism” or being marked wrong. The facilitators look for opportunities to complement trainee responses with statements such as “thank you for your point,” and actually build on or refer to student comments in ensuing discussions.
Finally, although we do not discuss them in depth here, the value of ice-breaker and team-building activities cannot be underemphasized. Over the course of the weekend, we insert a variety of these shorter activities, from Friday evening through to Sunday afternoon. These activities are critical in building community and encouraging students to engage with one another. They also serve to sustain motivation, allow students to take “brain breaks,” provide for much-needed interludes in an intense learning context, provide significant entertainment value, and allow us to build community within the training room. That we do not discuss them here in detail is not a reflection on our view of their worth but instead a recognition that these activities are often very situation-specific, facilitator-specific, and space-specific.[footnoteRef:114]  [114:  Examples of these activities can be found in a variety of civic education curricula, including Mikva Challenge’s Issues to Action Curriculum, teaching activity guides such as the Morningside Center’s Getting to Know You Classroom Activities program, and team building activity books, such as Teamwork and Teamplay. Mikva Challenge. (2012). For more on the value of using icebreakers and brain breaks, see, e.g., Romm, C. (2016). Icebreakers Are Terrible. They Also, Unfortunately, Work Really Well. NyMag.com. Retrieved from http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/09/back-to-school-icebreakers-are-awkward-but-they-work.html. Issues to Action Curriculum. Chicago, IL: Mikva Challenge; Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility. (2008). Getting to Know You: Classroom Activities for Starting Off the School Year. New York, NY: Morningside Center. Retrieved from: http://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/getting-know-you-classroom-activities-starting-school-year; Thiagarajan, S. & Parker, G. (1999). Teamwork and Teamplay. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.] 


B) Saturday Morning
1) Sharing Stories and Values: Story of Self
The first session on Saturday morning is an opportunity to set the stage for the weekend ahead. After plunging into the experiential learning on Friday evening, we now pause to introduce ourselves, set forth our objectives for the weekend, and continue to build community in the room. The facilitators each share their beliefs and passion for Street Law by telling a “story of self.” Each facilitator shares personal photographs about their own background and explains why Street Law is personally important. One facilitator shared what she called her ‘light bulb moment’ when she understood what it meant to her to do Street Law and to be able to use her legal education to help others gain access to justice. Following the facilitator sharing, the trainees, who are grouped at tables of four to five, are asked to share a photograph from their phone which signifies “home.” The trainees are then asked to use their photos to share their own short “story of self” with their table groups.
As the facilitators explore how Street Law’s methods and approach to learning differ from traditional teacher-driven instruction, we ask that the trainees maintain an open mind and we invite them to consider the pros and cons of this approach over the course of the weekend. The facilitators then outline the trajectory of the weekend and are explicit about the final project: each pair of trainees will design and lead a short lesson on Sunday afternoon. We assure the trainees that we will provide them with the structure and framing while helping them to uncover their own teaching creativity before Sunday afternoon. Foregrounding the ultimate deliverable and being clear about the public and peer nature of this deliverable can cause a ripple of nervous excitement but we believe this serves to heighten trainee interest and commitment from the outset. 
The last portion of the belief and sharing opening is when we introduce “Chart Groups.” Trainees will work in these groups over the course of the weekend to reflect on and process their learning. In groups of five, the trainees are assigned to one of the blank pieces of chart paper located around the room. On each piece of paper, the trainees will create a chart with three columns and the headings “What,” “How,” and “Why.” Following each substantive activity, the members of each chart group will convene by their chart and populate their chart with descriptions of the activity we just did, the methodology behind the activity, and the rationale behind the activity. This reflection technique was modeled for the groups on Friday night and they are tasked with completing their charts for the morning’s activity before the first break.
Trainees will return to their same chart groups repeatedly throughout the weekend, including for a cumulative listing of their “Top 10 teaching tips,” a group-specific collection of tips and observations that the groups’ members have acquired over the course of the training. Each group will also post their chart sheets on the wall and subsequently share out these tips to the whole group through a spokesperson. 
The honest and open approach modeled in the ‘Belief and Sharing’ session by facilitators works effectively to officially welcome the trainees and to begin the process of trainees introducing themselves to one another. This activity begins the process of building trust and community within the trainee group and between the trainees and facilitators. The facilitators’ sharing of their own journeys and belief in the methodology sets the stage for trainees’ formation of belief and creates a common sense of purpose. The early sharing helps encourage an early sense of community and sets the tone for the workshop while also laying the groundwork for the entire program. For example, as Irish and Scottish trainees (and their future students) can often be more guarded and slower to share their personal beliefs and emotions, especially in new group settings, the lead from the US facilitators can help inject new Street Law cultural norms into the weekend and the training process. The importance of this exercise and the motivational, inspiring lead of the US facilitators cannot be underestimated, especially as a tool to overcome any initial cynicism or defensiveness about the methodology. This opening exercise gives the Irish and Scottish trainees permission to ‘disarm’ themselves and embrace the positivity and optimism that will be critical in establishing community for the weekend and beyond.

2) Adding Analytical Reasoning: Should it be a Crime?
The facilitator arranges the trainees in groups of four and provides the groups a sheet with the following instructions “You are the leading committee of a new country.  You have been tasked with creating the criminal law of the country.  Read each situation and decide whether each item should be a crime.”  There are 12 situations to be decided upon, including, ‘Robert pushes crack cocaine and uses the proceeds to support his mother, who is on social welfare’ and ‘Melissa refuses to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle.’ See Appendix IV.
After the trainees decide which acts should be considered a crime (not what is a crime), the trainees rank the crimes in order of gravity. Throughout the activity, the trainees are discussing, explaining and analyzing what factors make an act into a crime, whether different justifications excuse acts, how the costs to society and/or the harm to different individuals might impact the severity of the act, and their own personal views on issues such as marijuana legalization and prostitution. Thereafter, the facilitator draws a chart on the board and records the responses and ranking of the various groups. The facilitator then leads a discussion around different trainee responses and the direction of conflict. Trainee responses are organized into a T chart of factors that are “criminal” or “not criminal,” making efforts to record the trainee comments as faithfully as possible and with the facilitators serving only to organize and record trainee responses. The closing activity asks trainees to draft their own one sentence definition of what should be a crime, following the prompt “A crime is . . .” and then, applying their own definition, to look back at the descriptions of the acts to determine whether their definition would include all of the acts the group considered crimes, while excluding those which the group did not consider crimes.
‘Should it be a crime?’ is a valuable component of the Street Law trajectory because of how it shapes the way young people think about the law. Many young people experience the law only as something that happens to them. This activity prompts them to think about the law not as something that controls them, but as something they can have control over. Through the discussion and debate process, the trainees gain firsthand experience with how different people can examine the same fact pattern and have drastically different opinions depending on their own moral, political, and socioeconomic orientations and evaluation of different factors. The facilitators’ role in inviting and respecting student comments and opinions during this process, often by writing them on the board, is absolutely critical in the formation of a group culture where participants feel valued and feel comfortable sharing their thoughts.
The use of nuanced hypotheticals forces the trainees to consider their own feelings around the myriad different factors that influence whether something should be a crime and what the corresponding punishment should be. Trainees examine complicated criminal law concepts such as motive, mitigating circumstances, justification, intent, and nature of harm, all while vigorously discussing entertaining hypotheticals. When the trainees draft their own version of what should be a crime, they shift into the role of legislators and are asked to consider what is best for society and the general good. This sense of agency and relevance that Street Law helps create is central to building belief in the power of Street Law to impact young people’s interactions with the law. Applying the law reinforces this agency by taking the trainees’ new definitions seriously and applying them to new situations. 
An example of how trainees’ prior knowledge and different interpretations of these hypotheticals bears on their thinking and reasoning skills emerges during their consideration of the statement “Lily approaches a man for purposes of prostitution.” Trainees differ in whether they believe the act of selling sex ought to be a crime, the role of consent, and to what extent people have freedom to make decisions around their bodily integrity. But the variations don’t stop there-trainees can also explore whether the statement is intended to cast Lily or the man as the prostitute. This can evolve into a discussion around gender dynamics and the importance of which actor initiated the potentially illegal exchange. 
In this exercise, as in others throughout the weekend, trainees progress from a fundamental understanding of the activity and concepts into the application of more complex, higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation and creation. This structure is intentional as Street Law activities seek to be both accessible and also prompts for the practice and development of higher-order thinking skills. Educational theorists typically present this connection between the cognitive complexity and specificity required to accomplish a learning objective through the use of a taxonomy, the most popular of which remains Bloom’s Taxonomy.[footnoteRef:115] In the next session, trainees will develop their own taxonomy and be introduced to Bloom’s model. [115:  Bloom’s Taxonomy refers to a hierarchical framework for organizing student learning objectives into different levels of complexity and specificity, moving from a base of knowledge and memorization through to higher-order thinking skills such as evaluation and creation. The concept was first set forth in a 1956 volume edited by Benjamin Bloom, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, and while the model has since benefitted from new research into educational theory and psychology, Bloom’s Taxonomy remains a core instructional tool for designing and executing lessons that promote higher order thinking skills. Engelhart, M., Hill, W., Furst, E., & Krathwohl, D. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. B.S. Bloom (Ed.). New York, NY: Longmans, Green and Co. For more on the evolution of Bloom’s Taxonomy, see Marzano, R., & Kendall, J. (2007). The New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.] 

Pedagogy: Lesson Design, Lesson Planning and Lesson Execution 
The goal of this session is to help students understand some of the sound educational theory that should inform their lessons as well as the structure for writing a lesson plan. The facilitators begin by asking student groups to draft a list of the different verbs a teacher can ask her students to perform in the process of thinking and learning. Trainees can generate a list of 50-60 words with little prompting, running the gamut from ‘grok’ through to ‘ruminate’ and everything in between. During the subsequent comparison of student lists, the facilitator prompts the students to identify differences among the verbs. Trainees are then asked to draw a pyramid of verbs, with the simplest and least cognitively demanding verbs at the base of the pyramid and the more complex verbs at the top. Only at the end of this session does the facilitator introduce the concept of Bloom’s Taxonomy and suggest the importance of intentionally differentiating objectives and means of attaining them while aiming to maximize higher level thinking assignments. An appreciation of Bloom’s Taxonomy is an important building block for the lesson planning and creation activities that follow later on.
Facilitators next place the trainees in a hypothetical ‘education emergency’- your co-teacher just called in sick and you need to teach his lesson; what information do you need to know? Trainees quickly realize that in addition to the logistical details around the school and number of students, the replacement teacher needs to know the objective for the day’s lesson, the materials needed, the procedure and activities, and a method of assessment to determine whether and what the students learned during the day’s lesson. As the facilitator records trainees’ answers on the chart paper, the trainees quickly grasp that they have constructed their own lesson plan template. Before they can break for lunch, trainees are required to work in groups and write the lesson plan for the ‘Should it be a Crime?’ activity that they just completed. While trainees are later provided with access to the original lesson plan (and all other materials used throughout the training), the process of drafting their own lesson plans usually makes the original ones unnecessary.
The lesson planning exercise builds capacity in the trainees by drawing on education theory and reinforcing how the activities are not only fun, but grounded in solid educational theory. Street Law encourages the trainees to think as educators, to design learner-centered lessons, and to ‘think about what you want your students to take out of this.’ The lesson planning session helps build concrete skills that will increase trainee competence in the classroom including-instructional moves such as the use of “chunking” a lesson into 10 to 15 minutes sections, moving up and down Bloom’s Taxonomy while striving towards the higher level thinking, and the foresight required to prepare all materials and student groups while also thinking about assessment and evaluation instruments. Trainees learn, for example, about the important predictive connection between the task assigned to their students and the performance their students will deliver. A good lesson should ensure that the students first have a strong grounding in the relevant knowledge and theories and then a task that requires the students to apply this knowledge in a way that requires higher-order thinking skills such as synthesis and evaluation. The trainees’ assessment of what their students learned during the lesson, whether demonstrated through a written artifact or oral presentation, should then focus not merely on whether the students memorized certain facts but on the skills the students used in applying that knowledge to new situations or fact patterns.
By providing trainees with the fundamental skills and the tools to plan an effective lesson, the facilitators are also equipping the trainees with the template that helps them sequence their engaging and interactive activities in a logical fashion to support effective classroom management, often one of the trickiest hurdles for young teachers.
The style of facilitation is energetic and dynamic, helping to grow community and modeling ways to maximize instructional capacity. This “quick fire” style using a strong voice and moving around the room keeps the pace up, engages participants, and is an effective way of modeling the Street Law approach. By using a continuous loop of reinforcing the learning, considering different hypotheticals, asking trainees questions, and being responsive to trainees’ comments and questions, the facilitators help the trainees review earlier sessions, process the ongoing activity, and locate the present learning in the broader Street Law trajectory. The use of chart groups and collective reflection helps build community and also ensures that the trainees are internalizing and memorializing their learning and key takeaways. The training is modeling the “I do, we do, now you do” approach to learning through cycles of doing, observing, and reflecting.
Throughout the weekend, the trainees work in a number of different groups and in several different configurations, from whole group to small group and even individual reflection. Trainees begin the weekend sitting at pre-arranged tables based simply on how they filter into the room and where they choose to sit. We intentionally let trainees stay in the comfort zones of these groups for the first activity—but the first one only. The only group that remains constant throughout the weekend is the chart group, discussed above as the primary way trainees reflect and externalize their learning after each session. At other times, usually during large group sessions with quick snippets of collaborative work, we employ simple techniques such as the “pair and share” or “elbow partner” for trainees to turn and share with one person located very close to them. 
When we are dividing the trainees into larger groups for activities such as ‘Aliens’ or Mock Trial, we make the group selection entertaining and varied. For example, we might ask trainees to silently order themselves by birthday (month and day only!) and then to then count off by four or we might provide them each with sticky notes in different categories and have them find a group of people “like” them. These groups can include Irish folk heroines, Scottish rugby players, Irish crisp flavors, Scottish poets, US States, American football teams, and more. Mixing up the groups is a useful method to constantly refresh group dynamics, to ensure that all trainees get a chance to contribute, and to help make the important personal connections that will build a sense of community. 

C) Saturday Afternoon
0. Inviting Student Questions: Morton, Syed, and Mock Trial
After lunch, the trainees divide into three groups, each group participating in a different stream to facilitate the modeling of distinct ninety minute lessons. Based on student interest and a desire to offer trainees proven high quality lessons and support for the culminating Mock Trial activity, we offered three streams: 1) The Michael Morton story; 2) Adnan Syed and the Serial Podcast; and 3) How to teach mock trial  and advocacy skills. Morton and Syed are inquiry-based lessons based on factual murder cases which have proved an effective method of inspiring curiosity and engagement in the classroom. 
Morton
The Morton lesson begins by asking trainees to help solve a murder by providing trainees access to the same evidence investigators used in the original murder investigation.[footnoteRef:116] The “twist”—that the case relates to a man who was falsely accused is only revealed towards the conclusion of the lesson. Prior to this, students assume the role of investigators and work in small groups attempting to establish if Michael (the murder victim’s husband) is the perpetrator.   [116:  Arthurs, S.  Dead Bodies and Live Minds: How Investigating a Real Murder Can Inspire Curiosity in the High School Classroom.  Social Education 79(5), 250-255.] 

Trainees use a graphic organizer to help evaluate the evidence gathered by the investigators. For each of the approximately 20 pieces of evidence, trainees discuss its significance and then assign each piece of evidence to one of three columns indicating whether the evidence points to a) Michael b) someone else or c) is irrelevant. In a fourth column they briefly explain “why.” Trainees then work in pairs as members of the police department’s public relations team and communicate their conclusion about whether Michael should be arrested via a tweet.
Ultimately, the story of Michael Morton’s incarceration and subsequent exoneration is revealed as the facilitator uses a slide presentation to lead a discussion around the crucial pieces of evidence reviewed by the group but not shared with the defense lawyers at the time of the investigation.  This challenges students to reconsider their previous conclusions and facilitates further discussions on prosecutorial misconduct and other common errors in wrongful convictions, the innocence project movement, the death penalty, and what flawed justice means for the victims in this case and crimes generally.

Syed
Similarly the Syed lesson uses a variety of interactive teaching strategies including student role playing in taking a critical look at the investigation of the real murder case that was the subject of the popular podcast Serial.[footnoteRef:117] The trainees are initially told that they have been accused of a crime and then asked to account for their whereabouts during three different time periods. They are then paired with another trainee and the trainees take turns interrogating one another about their alibis or lack thereof. As the interrogation is completed, trainees make observations about the other’s perceived truthfulness. Trainees share out what words they thing indicate truthfulness or lying. Trainees then listen to Syed’s account of where he was during the murder in question. Trainees similarly analyze Syed’s language in order to determine whether they believe his alibi story. [117:  Serial: Season One. (n.d.). Retrieved April 01, 2016, from https://serialpodcast.org/.  Undisclosed Podcast. (n.d.). Retrieved April 01, 2016, from http://undisclosed-podcast.com/.] 

rainees are then asked to continue the investigation of the murder through another alibi witness and a police photo of the victim’s car. The trainees have access to source documents and actual evidence from the case in order to draw their conclusions.

The demonstration lesson is a stand-alone lesson, but the trainees are given access to an entire unit based upon the Serial podcast.  That unit includes a complete investigation and evaluation of the case against Syed and Syed’s attorney’s performance.  The unit culminates in an oral argument regarding Syed’s access to effective counsel in his original trial.

How to Teach Mock Trials
Mock trials are an essential component of the Street Law curriculum and approach. The spring semester of the Georgetown Street Law program is devoted primarily to preparing high school students for participation in the annual mock trial tournament using a complex mock trial problem.[footnoteRef:118]  Irish Street Law classes often culminate in an abbreviated mock trial problem.  The Mock Trial stream gives trainees a framework for teaching a mock trial module within their own classes. This stream is different than the informal mini-mock trial that is built into the weekend training; the focus here is not on completing a trial itself, but understanding the topics that one would need to cover when teaching trial advocacy skills. We showcase a number of different learner-centered techniques that trainees can use over the course of their module.  [118:  Pinder, K. (1998) Street Law: Twenty-Five Years and Counting. Journal of Legal Education, 27(211-233). A description of the mock trial process and a typical problem is found on pp. 220-225.  An example of the 2016 Georgetown mock trial problem can be found at http://www.law.georgetown.edu/academics/academic-programs/clinical-programs/our-clinics/DC-Street-Law-Program/Education_Materials.cfm.] 

We start by identifying the key players in a trial—plaintiff (or prosecution), respondent (or defendant), attorneys, jurors, judges, and bailiff—and the major components of a trial. This includes the opening and closing statements, direct and cross examinations, and any motions that will be made. Students then learn the basics of direct examination through a hands-on lesson where two students (Student 1 and Student 2) sit at separate tables facing away from one another. Each table has an identical set of colored wooden blocks of different shapes. Student 1 is told to build some type of structure, which student 2 cannot see, using all the blocks. A third student (Student 3) stands between the two tables. Student 3 must be able to see the structure that Student 1 built and the blocks in front of Student 2. 
When Student 1 finishes her structure, Student 3 asks Student 1 to describe their structure using only open ended questions. Examples include: “What block is on the bottom?” “What is the shape of the next block?” Student 3 is able to influence Student 2’s construction through Student3’s clarifying questions to Student 1. Eventually, Student 2 will create a structure based on the answers Student 1 gives in response to Student 3’s questions. After Student 2 completes his structure, we will debrief the activity by discussing the types of questions Student 3 asked Student 1 in order for Student 2 to be able to replicate Student 1’s structure and the strategy the students used. The observing students may also suggest questions they would have asked or alternative strategies. The goal is to build trainees’ skills for direct examination. The focus of the discussion is how Student 3’s questions allow Student 1 to tell a story of his structure.
Next, we introduce the three theories or approached about how to prepare for a mock trial—Cyclone, Couch Potato, and Mock Trial Madness. For this section of the training, we use a highly simplified and abridged mock trial problem that can be examined and understood in the time allotted. The ‘Cyclone’ method of teaching mock trial is an approach where students move through a trial packet in a sequential fashion, beginning with the stipulated statement of facts and then progressing through witness statements. The teacher discusses each new witness statement in light of the seminal statement of facts and asks trainees to compare and contrast each witness’s statement as the class progresses. Trainees also experience how the teacher will strategically select trial practice skills to build into the lessons to assist the trainees in learning the facts, while at the same time, teaching the trainees the skills they need to conduct the trial. Trainees are shown how the ‘cyclone’ grows each week as trainees move through an educational rotation that includes new facts, skills, and practice. By the time trainees complete their review of the mock trial packet, they have access to all the facts and skills they will need to conduct the mock trial.
The ‘Couch Potato’ approach to mock trial focuses on specific moments or incidents from the mock trial problem. Trainees first read the stipulated facts and create a chronological timeline of all relevant events. Trainees next identify the specific moment or event they want to focus on and then examine each witness statement for information and perspectives on what happened during this moment.  After looking at and analyzing a single episode through the perspective of all witnesses, trainees will move to the evidence, case law, and statutes to see what materials are relevant to the specific episode. Moving through each piece of evidence, case law, and statutes, the trainees will then be able to access all accounts and information relevant to this particular episode and consider the interplay between this episode and the broader claims. Through this ‘couch potato’ approach, the trainees learn how to prepare their students through major episodes that integrates all relevant components of the trial as they move down the timeline in chronological order. When they reach the end of the timeline, the trainees will have reviewed all aspects of the trial packet, giving their students a complete view of all issues and how they fit together. 
‘Couch Potato’ teaches the skills trainees need to engage with the mock trial problem by incorporating trial skills into each step of the learning process. During every episode studied, the teacher will incorporate different trial skills into the exploration of the facts, evidence, case law, and statutes. As the trainees move through the timeline, their trial skills will build on each other so that at the end of the time line the trainees will not only have a complete understanding of the facts, relevant pieces of evidence, and substantive issues in the trial, but also a full range of trial skills.

The ‘Mock Madness’ approach prioritizes developing trainees’ general mock trial skills before digging into the particular problem and facts of the formal case. Trainees are presented with a number of increasingly complex mini-mock trials to help build their mock trial skills before engaging with the actual mock trial packet the trainee plans to use for the mock trial module. Before moving from one mini-mock trial to the next, more complex trial, trainees work in small groups to demonstrate their comprehension and competency of the skills learned in the shorter trial. An example of the scaffolding approach of ‘Mock Madness’ would ask trainees to rotate through the roles of prosecutors/plaintiffs in an early mini-mock trial, as both prosecutors and witnesses in a second mini-mock trial, and then as prosecutors, witnesses, and defense attorneys in a third mini-mock trial. Trainees discuss how learners move through each mini-mock trial, the fact patterns, evidence, and legal issues become more complex. Once trainees have demonstrated their mastery of the critical mock trial skills through in-class role plays and discussion, the actual mock trial packet is introduced and trainees have the tools to learn, analyze, and develop their roles within the unique facts and case law of that trial.
During this session, trainees are first provided with an overview of each of these three approaches to teaching about mock trial, similar to the explanation above. Trainees then work in small groups with each group assigned one of the three different mock trial teaching approaches and supporting materials. The session concludes with a large group debrief session around the merits and limitations of each approach and how trainees might adapt or incorporate these approaches into their own classrooms.

Pedagogy: How We Learn
Returning to the whole group, the facilitator presents a short slideshow entitled ‘How We Learn.’ These slides reference “3 shapes and 2 graphs to know,” with each of these shapes and graphs introducing a key concept of constructivist learning methodology. This presentation shares the theory behind the Street Law teaching model and reinforces the strong pedagogical and methodological underpinnings of this approach. Evidence of solid education research is offered as proof that these techniques work and have meaningful effects on retention levels, as well as to emphasize the importance of teacher impact, the need to appropriately challenge students, and the importance of connecting with your students to promote classroom engagement.[footnoteRef:119] [119:  See, e.g., The Higher Education Academy. (2010). Student Engagement Literature Review. York: Vicki Trowler.] 

A chart group session that follows “How we learn” asks groups to list their specific collection of tips and observations acquired over the course of the training group’s members. Shared out cumulatively, the repetition of key teaching skills by all groups equips trainees with a set of simple techniques to focus on for their first class (and usually a fair amount of laughter as trainees translate pedagogy into their own terms; one group summarized the need to vary and group classroom activities as “Chunk it up,” for example). The trainees also continue to learn the useful techniques modeled by the facilitators which can be mirrored in the future.  This provides the trainees with a collective confidence and reassurance ahead of the commencement of their teaching placement.

Pedagogy: Street Law in Ireland and Scotland
The Street Law programs in Ireland and Scotland seek to move the trainees from participants in lessons and activities created by the facilitation team to designers and executors of lessons that will work best in Irish and Scottish schools. These sessions begin with the importance of connecting with your students and their interests through an appealing topic. The host country facilitators select a current issue of legal debate and local interest (in 2015, for example, we selected the Syrian refugee crisis) in advance of the Orientation weekend. The facilitators then prepare a number of resources that could be used as prompts or hooks into that lesson. Our examples included a video from YouTube, several photographs, an editorial cartoon, and a newspaper report. 
Trainees are placed in groups of five and given fifteen minutes to design an engaging law-related lesson around the resource that was distributed to them. Each group then shares their idea with the larger group. This activity brings the local expertise and perspective of the trainees to bear on one topic and demonstrates how, within the space of thirty minutes, a focused group can create multiple different engaging and interactive lessons about the same topic.

Pedagogy: Trainee Panel
A benefit to operating the training workshops for multiple years in the same location is the ability to draw on previous trainees who have now spent time teaching in classrooms. Thus, a key component of the training weekend (after the first one) was the return of four volunteers from the previous year’s program for the Street Law veteran panel. These students briefly described their own experience of the program and then opened the floor to questions from the trainees. If not asked, the facilitators supplement questions from the floor with questions focused on the most effective way to build community in the classroom or the piece of advice the veterans wish they had know beforehand. 
The trainee panels, and the growing cohort of Street Law trainee alumni, help foster community far beyond the Orientation weekend. In both Ireland and Scotland, many of the trainees continue to support Street Law even as they embark on their professional careers. This can include returning to the Law Society for Street Law celebrations, mentoring the newer trainees, and even successfully advocating to have Street Law programs formally recognized as part of their law firm’s internship programs. Several trainees have written blogs discussing their experience during the Street Law program and encouraging other trainees to partake.[footnoteRef:120]  [120:  See, e.g., https://pashanky.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/the-next-stage-of-street-law/; http://www.lawscot.org.uk/education-and-careers/schools/street-law/street-law-trainers/; and http://www.lawscot.org.uk/news/2016/09/street-law-opening-doors-that-should-not-be-closed/.] 


Culminating Activity: Practice Teaching Preparation
The trainees know that they will be leading a brief lesson on Sunday afternoon. In this concluding session on Saturday, the facilitator explains the format of the practice teaching session. Trainees will work in pairs and all teaching pairs are required to teach a unique twenty minute lesson to a small group of their peers. Trainees are encouraged to use any of the interactive methods modeled or discussed during the training weekend but they are also free to come up with their own interactive methods. The day concludes with trainees working informally with their teaching partners to develop their lesson plans. Facilitators (and sometimes even the veteran trainees) circulate among the trainees and help them design their lesson plan and activities.
Community is at the heart of Street Law. The use of group work in the afternoon’s activities helps build community in the trainees, much as it will later build community among the high school students. Community develops in the trainees much as it would in the high school students through the discussion and interaction that group work facilitates. This first-hand experience of the positive outcomes promoted through the use of different modalities completes a change in our trainees. Their original skepticism regarding the value of group work is replaced with a commitment and competency to use these techniques in their practice.
In a demonstration of inter-cohort community and belief in the Street Law approach, the veteran trainees voluntarily remained to assist trainee groups in the design process. Despite their inexperience in the classroom, trainees recognize the power of a well-designed lesson that can ignite the interest of students. Further reassurance and belief is drawn from the positive experiences communicated by their peers from last year’s cohort.
Teaching capacity is developed in each session. In the modeled lessons the trainees pick up the strategies use which they are encouraged to mirror. Teaching techniques are reinforced in the chart group session through the repetition of key teaching tips by all the chart groups. The use of three different learning streams provides an additional opportunity to boost the objectives of building belief, community and capacity post orientation. It encourages post-weekend peer-to-peer sharing wherein each trainee can share the lesson they experienced with their peers.
Trainees acknowledge their inexperience but understand that a well-designed lesson plan drafted in the principle of “talk less, teach more” can help create important connections in the classroom. The trainees’ belief and capacity in their teaching competence is reinforced by their exposure to ideas and a series of potential lessons that they can use. Importantly, the original lessons designed by each trainee group are then added to a lesson plan bank available to all trainees. In valuing the trainees’ competence and ability to design unique lessons at this early stage, trainees’ confidence that they can teach effectively grows and is reinforced by the veteran trainee panel sharing their successful experiences.

E) Sunday Morning
0. Integrating Facts and Law through Advocacy: Mini Mock Trial
The mini-mock trial is one of the two capstone elements of the Orientation weekend. In 90 minutes we give trainees a tour of the trial process, and model for them how to use the jigsaw grouping technique to divide the trainees into groups and to prepare and conduct simultaneous mock trials. These mini mock trials are based on the informal “small claims court” structure in many jurisdictions where plaintiffs can bring claims for small monetary amounts using informal legal procedures and without a lawyer. In the mini mock trials, trainees gain experience as either plaintiffs, defendants, or judges on how to present, defend, or judge a simple case with common legal claims.
The facilitator begins the session with a brief introduction of the topic of the mock trial or, if the students have no previous exposure to trial advocacy, a short introduction to the process of a trial. We ask students questions to activate their prior general knowledge on the subject, like “What is a trial? Who are the key players in a trial?” and “What happens in a trial?” in order to piece together the procedural components of a trial. 
The facilitator then introduces the substantive topic of the mini-mock trial through an immersion activity that invites students to consider a key piece of evidence in the trial. Past trials have centered around a key piece of visual evidence such as a tattoo or YouTube video or around a piece of audio evidence such as a hip hop song. Trainees work through a “See, Think, Wonder” handout as they consider this initial evidence prompt. See Appendix V. This handout asks trainees to write down “What they see” when they look at the piece of evidence, to elaborate on these observations through the “What they think” section, and then to use these insights to complete the “What they wonder” portion. We use this analysis as a spring board to prime trainee curiosity, highlight key issues that may arise in the case, and generate key questions that students would like answers to about the facts of the case. 
Trainees then each receive a common mock trial packet.[footnoteRef:121] The packet contains a one page summary of the trial with guided questions, witness statements, case summaries, evidence, case analysis sheets, and a verdict sheet. Students are given ten minutes to individually read through the one page summary and answer the questions while considering the perspectives of both the plaintiff and defendant. The facilitators then initiate a conversation about the key issues in the case by asking students what facts they learned from the one page summary and how those facts resolved questions from their See/Think/Wonder handouts. Trainees share their opinions around what they think the main issue in the case is, what key facts could resolve this issue, and what legal arguments will be most relevant.  [121:  These trials are typically simplified versions of the complex mock trial problems developed by Georgetown’s program each year for its mock trial tournament and freely available on the Street Law Clinic’s website.] 

Trainees are next split into groups to prepare for the mini-mock trial itself. The key idea is to divide the group in three, with one third of the whole assigned to be plaintiffs, one third as defendants, and one third as judges. These subgroups then read and prepare the problem from the perspective of their given role.  Then they are again subdivided into triads of one judge, one plaintiff and one defendant to simultaneously argue the cases in groups of three around the room(s). The jigsaw technique we suggest requires two different groupings within the same activity, one based on the role each trainee will play during trial and one based on which trial triad the trainee will join. To accomplish the first group division, the packets are printed in three different colors to assist with dividing the students into their roles as plaintiff, defendant, or judge. For example, if you have thirty students, we would print out ten blue packets, ten green packets, and ten red packets. The students who receive the blue packets would be the plaintiffs, those who receive the green packets would represent the defendants, and those who receive the red packets would be judges. In addition, each set of colored packets should be labeled on the front with a number from one to ten. 
Trainees are given twenty to twenty-five minutes to prepare for the mock trial in their role groups. Thus, the blue packets (plaintiffs) would gather in one room while the green packets (defendants) and red packets (judges) would gather in separate rooms. With their group members, the trainees work their way through the case analysis sheets which help scaffold their trial preparation with prompts around the witness statements, case law, and evidence. Judges are asked to analyze the components of the case from the perspective of a neutral party and prepare questions for the representatives of each side based on the issues in the case and the case law. 
After trainees have completed their preparation in the role groups, they regroup based on the number written on the front of their packet. This regrouping should result in ten groups of three that each include one representative for the plaintiff, one representative for the defendant, and one judge. The students are now given fifteen to twenty minutes to conduct their trial. The “Judges” are instructed to run the trials and give each representative three minutes to present their side of the case. The representatives will give a short “opening statement” and then introduce evidence and make arguments to support their client using the case law. The judge will ask each representative questions and finally determine the verdict. 
When the trials conclude, twenty minutes are dedicated to a substantive and procedural debrief of the activity. Ten minutes are spent analyzing and discussing the actual activity—we ask the judges what their verdicts were and why some representatives were more persuasive than others based on the arguments that representatives came up with and how they chose to support their arguments. We ask the students how they would change their arguments based on feedback from the judges to better advocate for their clients. 
The second half of the debrief asks trainees to take a step back from the activity and analyze it from a methodological perspective: what were the teaching and learning methods they experienced, how these were accomplished, why we organized the activity the way we did, and how the different parts of the activity connect to our core themes of Belief, Capacity, and Community. 
Belief in the methodology is interwoven throughout this debrief conversation because it is during this conversation when students will make the connection between the active portions of the mini-mock trial and the deeper lessons about trial process and advocacy we were teaching them.  How can students connect what they learned during the introduction, preparation, and actual trial to the trial process?  Why do we choose to teach about trials this way as opposed to walking students through the components of a trial through a lecture? We build Capacity through this conversation as well by connecting the underlying lesson objectives to concrete portions of the mini-mock trial activity. Finally, we help to build and strengthen our Community through the natural interaction afforded through the two different group work configurations that we use during the activity. Additional methodological points that can be surfaced include the virtues of the “See, Think, Wonder” approach, the value of the opportunity to plan before performance, and the benefits of independent, non-teacher directed experience.

F) Sunday Afternoon
0. Culminating Activity: Planning and Teaching Practice Lessons 
The culmination of the Orientation weekend is the practice teaching session. The goals of the practice teaching sessions for the trainees are to apply their knowledge of learning principles to create and conduct lessons, to build their repertoire of methods, and to “get their feet wet” in the actual teaching of lessons in a supportive environment. The trainees are given complete autonomy to select their topic and are encouraged to select topics that will be relevant and interesting to their future students as well as valuable for the students’ practical knowledge of the law.[footnoteRef:122] Working in smaller groups of teaching pairs, each pair will teach a twenty-minute lesson to their peers. The trainees in each audience are asked to take on the role of high school students for the purpose of the practice teaching. We also provide all trainees with a rubric to help guide their evaluation of their peers’ practice lessons. The rubric asks participants to evaluate the lesson by identifying how the lesson was learner centered, what legal principles were clearly communicated, and how the teachers helped build community among the group.[footnoteRef:123] [122:  One way to simultaneously scaffold and differentiate the lessons is to assign each pair to a different method not fully developed in the training, e.g., using a document, opinion poll, chart or graph, cartoon, or newspaper article. That way, the groups share additional tools and approaches. Often, these short demo lessons can become foundations for fuller lessons of outstanding quality and put in a shared lesson bank.]  [123:  An alternative to providing the rubric is to use the debriefs of the demonstration teaching lessons to develop rubrics, which later can be compared to the facilitators’ exemplary rubric.] 

We split the trainee group into smaller groups of six to ten trainees with one experienced Street Law facilitator assigned to each group of trainees. The smaller groups sizes allows the exercise to be completed in a reasonable time and helps alleviate any potential stress while also allowing enough time for substantial feedback. The demonstration lessons must occupy twenty minutes of “live teaching time” (meaning, if the trainees’ lessons end before twenty minutes is up, they must think on their feet and fill the time like teachers are required to do in the classroom) and are based on the unique lesson plan prepared the previous day and that morning.
A ten-minute debrief follows each twenty minute lesson, totaling around thirty minutes for the combined lesson and debrief of each teaching pair. Logistically, this means that a group of eight demonstration teachers will need 2-2 ½ hours to complete the exercise. For thirty two trainees, four facilitators are needed. The teaching pairs of the lesson initiate the review recounting their experience, outlining what they thought went well, what surprised them, and areas they can improve. The rest of the group is all invited to contribute, with comments roughly pegged to the practice teaching rubric. 
This peer feedback is kept constructive and positive, furthering the idea that there is a group support network in place. We typically focus comments not on the individuals teaching the lesson so much as on the methods of the lesson itself. That is, the focus is not on whether the practice teachers are good or bad or right or wrong, but what were the useful and positive dimensions of the practice lesson, and having done it or seen it, how might the lesson be modified. 
Notably, the facilitator should ideally be doing very little talking during the debrief—the hope is that the trainees will identify and speak to effective teaching practices after their weekend immersion. The practice teaching is a capstone experience that both integrates the learning from the training and prepares the trainees for their actual classroom assignments. It is important to note that after the training, the staff of the Law Societies will continue to support the development of the trainees in their teaching sites through additional follow up instruction, observations, lesson banks of exemplary lessons, journals, consultations and other means.
Trainees derive great satisfaction from the practice teaching activity. Significantly, they now have taken a lesson from concept through to planning and execution. They gain experience teaching. Having achieved this with less than two days of preparation, it boosts confidence in their ability to present legal issues in an interesting way. This is also supported by exposure to the lesson plan ideas taught by others in their group. Listening to the thoughtful feedback of others in the group and commencing a process of self-reflection on how they teach further equipped them with the capacity to become better teachers.
 Summary, Review and Evaluation: Closing Reflection
The weekend concludes with a return to a whole group setting and a Quaker style closing reflection. The group is seated in circular formation and the facilitator explains that people are asked to individually reflect on the weekend and share their thoughts with the group by completing the statement “I used to think . . .  now I think . . .” Nobody is called upon to speak nor compelled to speak but only speak when ready (in our experience upwards of 80% of the participants will eventually comment).
The closing reflection is a powerful and emotive conclusion to the weekend; the sense of community is further reaffirmed in the group through the honesty of responses and the willingness of people to share voluntarily. The comments also consolidate much of the learning over the weekend as many of the observations made by trainees praise the Street Law methodologies, reflect on the sense of community, and express excitement about their coming teaching placements. In demonstrating the power of being able to change perceptions of the law through education, this final activity acts as a powerful launch- pad into the school placements.

VII. Further Research
This paper seeks to introduce the reader to the concept of Street Law and its unique legal education methodology, share the research supporting this methodology, and provide practitioners with a step-by-step guide on how to implement a weekend orientation program. These contributions, while valuable, are missing one critical component—proof that our model works. Since the initial Street Law Orientation weekends in both Ireland and Scotland, trainee interest and applications to participate in the Street Law programmed have more than doubled, with a selection process that now accepts only the most promising candidates. At each Law Society, the Orientation weekends have become staples of the fall offerings and the number of schools seeking to participate has also grown. Demand has been so great in Scotland that the Law Society of Scotland now offers two training sessions-one in fall and one in winter. In Ireland, a number of the Street Law trainees have sought to continue their volunteering efforts during the later stages of their terms studying at the Law Society. These markers of success and the positive trainee, teacher, and student feedback have been accompanied by public recognition, including television and newspaper reporting.
We recognize, however, that more formal assessment and evaluation are essential aspects of measuring program success and critical to determining whether our program achieves its stated objectives, and gathering feedback on how future efforts can be improved. Accordingly, and with the goal of moving beyond anecdotal evidence and trainee enthusiasm, we designed and administered the first quantitative evaluation of the Street Law Orientation weekend during the 2015 trainings in Dublin and Edinburgh. We implemented a pre- and post-test model that all trainees completed before the Orientation weekend and immediately upon completion of the weekend. The results of this evaluation indicate that the Orientation weekend was markedly successful in changing trainee attitudes around their belief in learner-centered education, their capacity to deliver these lessons, and the value of community in the classroom. For reasons of scope, focus, practical considerations around paper length, and to permit a more in-depth consideration and discussion of this evaluation, and the accompanying qualitative and quantitative data and analysis, we present the results in a separate, companion paper to follow shortly.
The presentation of these positive results evidencing the change in trainee attitudes and beliefs resulting from the Orientation weekend only captures one piece of the puzzle, however. We propose several areas for further research to continue exploring the efficacy and impact of the Street Law Orientation weekend. First, trainee attitudes should be assessed and evaluated at a later time, with sufficient distance and remove from the Orientation weekend. This assessment could use the same pre- and post-test instrument and would ask trainees to evaluate the success of the Orientation weekend after having delivered Street Law lessons on their own in secondary school classrooms. Additional areas of study might explore whether and to what extent the Street Law experience helped develop trainees’ legal skills, professional identities, and commitments to public service.
Another area for future research would examine the impact of the trainees as teachers in their secondary school placements. Evidence of how well the Street Law methods promote increased student academic achievement, social and emotional wellbeing, and school attachment within the Street Law classes would be a powerful testimonial to the benefits of Street Law. Quality civic education programs have been shown to develop a host of pro-social outcomes, including students’ critical thinking skills, sense of agency, and educational aspirations.[footnoteRef:124] Determining to what extent Street Law also impacts these outcomes could drive demand for increased Street Law programming.   [124:  Arthurs, S. (2015). Street Law: Creating Tomorrow’s Citizens Today. Lewis & Clark Law Review, 19(4), 925-961.] 

A final, broader area of study would examine how Street Law programs advance and complement the goals of Law Societies and public legal bodies. Making the law more accessible and understandable through legal education are common goals of national and regional bodies and a primary objective of Street Law programming. Increasing access to the legal profession and encouraging diversity within the law student and legal professional ranks are additional important goals and potential byproducts of Street Law’s intentional focus on underserved communities. Street Law also has the potential to affect the general public’s view of the Law Society, understanding of the work the Law Society undertakes, and perception of the positive contributions lawyers can make within a society.
VIII. Conclusion
The rapid proliferation of Street Law programs across the globe offers tremendous promise to both members of the legal community and to the ordinary citizens who interact and experience the law in their daily lives. Law students and young lawyers delivering Street Law programs acquire invaluable practical skills and perspective on the law and their role in the legal profession and as members of the broader community. Law societies, law schools, and bodies committed to legal education can use Street Law as an accessible vehicle for promoting understanding of the law, encouraging interest and appreciation for the legal profession, and reshaping and crafting a new narrative around the role of lawyers and law students in promoting access to justice. Students and community members who experience Street Law trainings develop their critical thinking, expressive, and cognitive skills, become familiar with the concepts and theories behind practical legal subjects, and gain new insights into their rights and responsibilities as citizens. 
Of course, a critical precursor to the development of a successful Street Law program is the training of the young lawyers or law students who will deliver the Street Law programming to secondary school students and community members. Until now, there has been no comprehensive guide for how to build and execute a successful Street Law training. Interested legal education practitioners now have a seminal resource to assist with this process. Similarly, there have been no previous efforts to ground the principles and practice of the Street Law method in established research. This paper accomplishes both of these goals for the first time and offers an invaluable resource to aspiring and committed legal education practitioners, Law Societies, and universities throughout the world seeking to launch a Street Law program.
In this paper, we first explain the Street Law methodology and approach. We then discuss how this approach is grounded in the best practices and research around civic engagement, learner-centered education, intensive teacher preparation, and community building. We next provide a detailed step-by-step guide for how to design and implement a successful Street Law orientation program-whether in one weekend or over a longer period of time.[footnoteRef:125] By explaining our activities, identifying how each one fits into the broader Street Law trajectory and reinforces our core outcomes of building belief, capacity, and community, it is our hope that practitioners take from our work an understanding of What we do during our trainings, How we run each activity, and Why we chose and sequenced the activities the way we did.   [125:  We believe it is fundamental to incorporate the various stages of the trajectory into training for all new Street Law instructors, either through the weekend format or through an orientation of longer duration, followed by additional seminars throughout the course of the program. This weekend structure is by no means the only recipe for a successful Street Law training, however. In order for Street Law trainings to be substantive and meaningful across cultures, each practitioner should adapt the training in a way that is responsive to the local cultural and host institution. The stages in the Street Law trajectory—valuing student ideas, building student voices, sharing stories and values, adding analytical reasoning, inviting student questions, integrating facts and law through advocacy, and a culminating activity—can be developed through a variety of lessons and activities and over different periods of time. We encourage practitioners to come up with new, culturally appropriate activities that aim to achieve the same goals of laying the groundwork for high level cognitive and expressive learning that we set forth at each stage.
] 

One of the most encouraging and reinforcing hallmarks of the Street Law community, from practitioners to participants, is the universal spirit of collaboration and cooperation this experience generates. As facilitators and Street Law educators, we all believe deeply in the transformative power of Street Law to make the law more relevant, more accessible, and more understandable. We want to share this approach with as many people as possible and hope that this paper provides a strong grounding in both how to do so and why to do so. 
A second paper, written to review the quantitative and qualitative data we collected during the trainings in Ireland and Scotland, will serve as a corollary to this paper. As readers of this second paper will soon see, the data we have collected strongly suggest that our workshop model can be a powerful tool to facilitate the broader dissemination and adoption of Street Law across the globe. 


EXTENDED PRACTICE – TEACHING AND LEARNING IN CLINIC

118

Appendix I: Who Gets the Heart?

Hearts and Minds

	You a member of a committee advising the heart specialists at St. Joseph’s Hospital on whom to accept as recipients of hearts for transplants.  A heart has just become available and there are several candidates to receive it.  Below is a list, in order from the first to request a heart to last, of the candidates. You must decide by the end of this class, otherwise the chances for the operation’s success will not be great.  All candidates are terminally ill and may not survive if they do not receive a new heart soon.

1. Maria, a cancer researcher, 55, who other researchers believe may be close to finding a cure for cancer.  While the researcher works with a team, she employs 50 people in DC. Without her leadership, the research company would fail and all 50 employees would lose their jobs. 

2. Darryl is a 17-year-old honors student who is the captain of his high school’s mock trial team and one of the best players on his high school basketball team.  He used to live in a homeless shelter until he earned a full academic scholarship to Georgetown University, where he plans on studying medicine.
3. Jose, a minister, 35, is known for inspirational work and public service for the poor. He has close relations with the hospital and agreed to donate $2 million to the hospital if he gets the heart.

4. Steve is a 20-year-old model who has been in advertisements for Gap, Aldo, and H & M.  He is active in the community and spends his spare time volunteering at a charity that raises money thousands of dollars for education and medical care for poor children.  
5. Hillary, an attorney, 28, recently graduated from law school, and is a promising civil rights attorney. She currently works for non-profit organizations that represent indigent (needy) clients that have been wrongfully convicted of a crime. She has heart disease and diabetes and has been told that she needs to eat better and start exercising.



Appendix II: Who Gets the Heart? Additional Facts

Scenarios

· Darryl was your best friend growing up. No one on the committee knows that you know Darryl. Not only did he live in a homeless shelter growing up, he is a cancer survivor. 

· You suspect that someone in the group knows one of the members on this list and may not have shared this with the group.

· You aspire to rise to the top of the hospital leadership team. You learned that Jessica is the daughter of the CEO for the hospital. The CEO asked you to help ensure that she gets the heart.

· Although you are a doctor, you’re real passion is research. You spoke to Maria last week and she guaranteed you a position as vice president of her research company if she gets the heart.

· John is your brother. No one on the committee know that you are related. You are very close to him and cannot image your life with him. Similarly, your kids—ages 2 and 5—love Uncle John because he takes care of them on the weekend when you’re at work. You are aware that John is a podiatrist (foot doctor) and believe that some people on the committee believe that John is a heart surgeon. 

· Steve is your ex-husband. No one on the committee knows that you know Steve. Steve left you alone with two children to pursue his modeling career. He is not paying child support and blowing his paycheck on partying, expensive cars, etc. You know that he has a life insurance policy in your name, and if he dies, you inherent everything.

· Committee Chair:

· Congratulations! You are the committee chair for the group. As the committee chair you are responsible for managing the committee and delivering a final decision for the committee. You are free to run the decision-making process however you feel fit. However, you—not your colleagues—will be submitting the name of the candidate.


Appendix III: Aliens
Aliens Lesson Plan

1. Divide students into small groups of 4-6.  Give one envelope to each group.  Each envelope should contain 15 strips of paper, each with a separate right printed on it (see below for the rights).  
2. Intro: Tell students that aliens have taken over our country.  Thankfully, they’re friendly aliens who want to let us live our lives without interruption.  However, they think we have way too many rights.  They’ve asked you to meet as a group to eliminate 4 of your rights – the rights that are least important to you.  You must come to a decision, and you must be unanimous in that decision. 
a. Allow as much time as there is fruitful discussion – usually 5-10 minutes.  
b. Give the students a 1 minute warning to come to their decision.
c. At the end of the time, collect the discarded rights. 
3. Tell the students that the aliens are very happy with your work, but they still think you have too many rights.  Have them eliminate 4 more rights and remind them to come to a unanimous decision.
a. Again, allow 5-10 minutes for students to decide.  Give 1 minute warning.
b. Collect discarded rights.
4.  Tell the students that, once again, the aliens are happy with their work.  In fact, the aliens let the students live with their 7 remaining rights for a full year.  Then, they decided that 7 rights were still too many.  They want you to eliminate 4 more rights (again, unanimously), leaving you with your 3 most important rights.
a. Allow 5 minutes. 
b. Collect discarded rights.
5. Ask each group to report their decision.  Write results on the board.
6. Group discussion:
a. Note which rights were most/least commonly picked.  
b. What strategies did the groups use to come to their conclusions?
c. What were the challenges they faced?
d. Why did they preserve certain rights and eliminate others?  What makes a right “important” to them?

Freedom of Speech
Freedom of the Press
Freedom of Religion
Right to Privacy
Freedom from Unreasonable Searches and Seizures
Equal Protection under the Law
Right to a Lawyer
Right to Assemble Peaceably
Right to Bear Arms
Right to Vote
Right to Work
Right to Marriage and Family
Right to Education
Right to Travel
Right to Life, Liberty and Due Process of Law


Appendix IV: Should it be a Crime?
SHOULD IT BE A CRIME?

You are a member of a committee to recommend changes in the law.  Read each situation.  Decide: FIRST, whether or not each item should be a crime, and THEN, rank those that your group feels should be a crime in order of their seriousness (i.e., 1 for the most serious, then 2, and so on).  Remember, this is not about what is a crime, but what you and your fellow committee members feel should be a crime.

A.	Robert pushes crack cocaine and uses the proceeds to support his mother, who is on welfare.						Crime? _____	Rank _____

B.	Katherine is a passenger in a car she knows is stolen, but she did not participate in the theft of the car.					Crime? _____	Rank _____

C.	Lucy picks a person’s pocket and takes a wallet containing $50.
Crime? _____	Rank _____

D.	Donald is a used car dealer who turns back the odometer on the cars he sells.									Crime? _____	Rank _____

E.	Susan is caught with a pound of marijuana.		Crime? _____	Rank _____

F.	Ted robs a liquor store at gunpoint.			Crime? _____	Rank _____

G.	Ellen leaves a store with change for a $10 bill after she realizes that she gave the cashier a $5 bill.							Crime? _____	Rank _____

H.	Lilly approaches a man for purposes of prostitution.
	Crime? _____	Rank _____

I.	Melissa refuses to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle.
Crime? _____	Rank _____

J.	The president of a company knows it pollutes a river with waste from its factory.
Crime? _____	Rank _____

K.	Marge gets drunk and hits a child while speeding through a school zone.
Crime? _____	Rank _____

L.	Burt observes his best friend shoplifting but does not turn him in.
Crime? _____	Rank _____


Appendix V: See, Think, Wonder
	                     See

	                               Think
	                    Wonder

	
	
	



241