Every trip is an adventure, and several Chamblee High School students can now tell you that they have a whole new perspective of how the criminal justice system works following their recent field trip to the “Journey Through Justice” program, sponsored by the State Bar of Georgia.
The “Journey Through Justice” program is a highly interactive learning experience for students and teachers in grades 4-12 that offers a variety of law lessons correlated to the Georgia Standards of Excellence. Students explored the State Bar of Georgia’s Museum of Law and saw the interactive displays of the Bill of Rights; Freedom’s Call: The March for Civil Rights; Cruel and Unusual Punishment; Checks and Balances: The Role of the American Judiciary; and Famous Georgia and U.S. Trials.
Chamblee social studies teacher Sally Stanhope was pleased with how this educational excursion gave her English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students a closer look at how the law really works and even insights beyond the courtroom.
“Chamblee High School encourages students to be global citizens,” Stanhope said. “This field trip was instrumental in helping them begin to develop an expertise on the Bill of Rights and see the seventh amendment in action during a mock trial, which emphasized how the law can mediate conflicting perspectives of an event in a humorous way that all my students appreciated.”
The mock trial featured a fully functioning courtroom where students served as lawyers, witnesses, and jurors. Chamblee High School student Derik Hernandez Mendez served as a bailiff during the mock trial and got a kick out of declaring for all to heed: “Hear Ye”!
“I just really like to say that in a real courtroom,” Mendez said. “I also like that my friends were going against each other as lawyers, but if we go again, I definitely want to be the judge.”
Student Madelin Lopez Morales enjoyed the mock trial too, and learning more about federally protected rights.
“It showed us how it really is in a courtroom and the importance of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”