What is Street Law?
Street Law is a one-semester field placement course offered in partnership with the Durham public schools. Second and third-year law students are placed with a middle or high school social studies teacher, most often a 10th grade Civics teacher, and teach a series of classes on legal topics that are part of the course curriculum.
The Street Law course has a “classroom” and a “field” component. During the first part of the semester, in the “classroom” component of the course, law students attend a weekly seminar at the law school where they learn about teaching methods and resources, plan teaching activities and create lesson plans. They meet with the cooperating teacher in their assigned school, observe his or her class, and determine which topics they will teach.
Students then spend the rest of the semester teaching in their assigned class, typically one day a week. After teaching assignments have begun, the “classroom” meets once a month.
Street Law students are provided a variety of materials for use in teaching, including a copy of the high school student text, Street Law: A Course In Practical Law and the accompanying teacher’s manual and workbook. In addition, a wealth of model lesson plans and mock trial materials and other teaching resources is available for student use.
What Do Street Law Students Teach?
The subjects law students teach are chosen by the regular teachers to fit into their overall lesson plan and the North Carolina standard social studies curriculum. The most frequently requested topics are criminal law and the criminal trial process, the North Carolina and Federal court systems, and constitutional law and criminal procedure, especially the landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases that form the framework of our legal system. Street Law students sometimes conduct mock trials with their classes or may arrange field trips to the law school or the Durham County courthouse.
Where Do Street Law Students Teach?
Currently, Street Law students work with teachers at Hillside, Riverside, Southern and Northern High Schools; Durham School of the Arts; the Middle College High School at Durham Technical Community College; Shepard Middle School, which has a Law and Forensics magnet program; and the Lakeview Alternative School. Law students have the opportunity to express a preference as their teaching placement. Every effort is made both to accommodate law students’ teaching requests and to provide law students to every teacher who requests them.
The Street Law course instructor recruits new teachers to participate in Street Law each semester. If you are a teacher and are interested in having a Street Law student work with your class, please contact Page Potter, ppotter@nccu.edu.
Why Take Street Law?
Teaching law to high school students provides excellent practical training in skills law students will use as attorneys, particularly in the areas of communication and client relations. Many students find Street Law’s most important lesson for their future law practice is learning to break down complex concepts and communicate about the law in terms that 10th graders – or clients and juries – can understand. Teaching Street Law helps sharpen public speaking and presentation skills, as well as honing the ability to think on one’s feet in response to unexpected questions. And as every teacher knows, teaching is the best way to deepen one’s own understanding of the subject taught and is an excellent way for law students to refresh their knowledge of basic law school subjects in preparation for the bar exam.
Street Law students also play a valuable role as ambassadors for the legal profession and role models for high school youth. They bring a fresh and real perspective to the high school classroom and can make legal and civics concepts relevant and exciting to middle and high school students, so that they become more engaged in learning. A study conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice in the 1980’s showed that Street Law courses have an impact on reducing juvenile delinquency in urban areas.
What Law Students Say About Street Law
“Street Law helped me improve my presentation skills and oratorical skills. I always had this fear of speaking in front of crowds, and I think the best way to test it is going in front of kids because they’ll be your true judges of how well you’re doing – like it or not, they’ll let you know. It really helped me out.” Jonathan Wilson 2009
“I was able to understand why it is so important for lawyers to be able to translate complex legal theories into the everyday vernacular. … It was a challenge to turn legal jargon into something that would make sense for the typical high school students. In the future I will be conscious that legal vocabulary can be complex, intimidating and difficult to understand if you are a layperson and I will be able to reach back to my days at Southern to find the right words to say...”
Ternisha Miles 2008
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“Teaching forced me to look at the information that I have spent the last three years learning and
attempt to put it into a workable language that a 10th grader could understand. I learned how to ask questions, I hope, without seeming patronizing or as if I was talking down to the students. Most importantly I got the students participating and asking questions. I could tell if they were getting it through their questions, and this occurs by encouraging a dialog. I must remember when talking to a client I must not just lecture, but listen, and encourage them to talk. …”
Jonathan Shaw 2008
“The biggest surprise for us was the kids. The students were just amazing, how into learning they were. You know, you go in there thinking, Are these kids going to like me? Are they going to be interactive? And our group was just awesome; we couldn’t have asked for better students. … I would say the biggest skill Street Law helped me develop is to be able to explain what we’ve learned to someone who doesn’t understand the legalese, which is very important when you’re working with clients.”
What Teachers Say About Street Law
Mary Helen Earle, Civics and Economics teacher, Hillside High School
“[Street Law] helps our high achieving students because it challenges them and gives them something to think about outside the boring basic civics that a lot of them know anyhow coming in. If they come in and are not so aware of the world, [Street Law] gives them something to grasp onto and puts a real life aspect to the boring stuff that they see that they have to memorize in school and it makes the court system realistic. To our students who are struggling and have unfortunate relationships or contact with the court system, it helps them understand more about the rights and privileges that they have as a citizen, and it helps them be strong and understand what’s happened in their family. So it touches all levels of our students in different ways.”
Esme Scott, Civics and Economics teacher, Durham School of the Arts
“Civics and Economics is probably the most important course [students] take in high school because it’s something they need to have for the rest of their lives. To bring in [the Street Law students], you really are helping them deal with situations that they have in everyday life. A lot of the students have questions about what their rights are in school, what their rights are in the street, things that have happened to neighbors or friends – so it’s something they’re very interested in and something they need to know about. And to have law students coming in – young successful law students – they see where they can go in life, what the opportunities are, and it gets them excited. … Street Law has helped my students – many of them who were disengaged from Civics – become more engaged. Some of them now are thinking about the legal profession; a lot more feel a need to do well in high school so they can get to college; it’s given them information and made them feel empowered.”
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