This guest post was submitted by City Academy Charter School, a public charter in Salt Lake City.
An Unexpected Invitation
City Academy's 2011 Mock Trial Team
On March 23, City Academy Charter School competed against Alpine School District’s Mountain View High School from Orem, Utah, at the Utah Court of Appeals for the 2011 State Mock Trial Championships. Although Mountain View won this year’s title they are unable to attend the National Championships this week in Phoenix, Arizona. As a result, the City Academy Mock Trial team of eight students and their teacher, Mr. Gareth Orr, have accepted the honor of representing Utah in their place. The City Academy team has worked hard and is prepared and eager to take to the national “Mock Trial stage.”
Susan Webster, City Academy’s Communications Director, says this is more than just a story about eight talented and lucky students from a small Salt Lake City charter school.
“This is no doubt a great honor for these students,” she says. “But this is also a wonderful example for teachers and parents about the power of hard work and the merit of Mock Trial as a teaching tool.”
Mock Trial is an Exceptional Teaching Tool
A school’s mission is to promote and advance learning. For high schools in particular, our job is to prepare each student with the knowledge and cognitive skills to support further learning and careers. City Academy was founded with the mission to provide academically rigorous curriculum that would prepare each student well for the college and careers of their choice. Mock Trial competition is a natural fit with the types of authentic and civically oriented learning opportunities City Academy is committed to providing for its students.
Participation in Mock Trial requires students to research and intellectually engage with important current topics that are selected for Mock Trial cases. For example, this year it was a cyber-harassment case for the state of Utah. And for the national competition, it was a civil case concerning the competing rights of indigenous peoples to use and enjoy their lands without interference, and those of the owners and operators of uranium mines who depend on mining to provide income, jobs and reasonably-priced nuclear energy. Mock Trial team members must be able to develop and draw on deep understandings of the issues of the case in order to “think on their feet” as they listen to arguments from the other side and quickly find meaningful approaches that will best defend and extend their own case.
Mock Trial is a Good Fit with Utah’s New Common Core State Standards
Utah’s adoption of the new Utah Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in 2010 has raised the bar on the obligations of high schools by requiring more profound understandings and abilities in literacy and numeracy from graduating students. In particular, the new standards in English Language Arts place emphasis on instruction that focuses on big ideas, and develops cognitive processes and intellectual strategies. Implementation of the new CCSS should result in students who can question and research, analyze and evaluate, as well as well as demonstrate complex understandings of key ideas.
City Academy is excited about the enriched focus on big learning that the new standards bring. We also see Mock Trial as one authentic context in which it is possible to continue to develop the types of learning outcomes outlined in the English Language Arts CCSS. Mock Trial team members must use many cognitively complex skills as they research complicated topics through primary documents and authentic readings. Particularly relevant to the new CCSS emphasis on argumentation in writing, students participating in Mock Trial must reason about the use of evidence to build support for the arguments of their case.
A student’s time in high school classes and programs is relatively fleeting and should be structured wisely to best focus on learning and preparing students for college and careers. City Academy is confident that time spent learning about important issues of the day and their history, preparing both sides of a case well, and then competing in mock court is learning time well spent. In light of adoption of the new CCSS for English Language Arts, we are even more confident of the place Mock Trial will have in our range of programs to support student learning. We also know that with Mock Trial competition, we are extending opportunities for students to learn grace, poise, collaboration, leadership, public speaking and etiquette through court room procedure. In preparation for future careers and life, these abilities are also not small accomplishments.
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