Activities
Legislation Drafting
Our school is fortunate to have close connections with two state legislators. With the help of one or both, students will draft a piece of legislation that addresses a specific problem with juvenile justice as it currently exists at the state level. We will study the development and format of several relevant pieces of state legislation. Then, working in groups, students will identify the specific problem, research all aspects of it in Oklahoma, research what other states are doing, and draft their proposed solution incorporating that information. Following requirements from provided templates, students will have to do research to support their proposals. Our legislators will provide guidance on language, length, format, and effectiveness. Students will encounter built-in language arts lessons on usage issues, verb tense, voice, and organization as they write to the provided requirements. This will be one option for a class-wide or small group final project, depending on the nature of the class. The US Congress, the National Speech and Debate Association, and several other institutions provide models and templates for writing or proposing legislation. Most state legislatures (but not Oklahoma) have manuals on writing bills. This activity should take a week with our two-hour class periods alongside other daily work and pieces of this unit.
Political Cartoons
With a google search of the key words “juvenile justice cartoons” dozens of relevant cartoons come up. We’ll look at a selection of cartoons that may include one that compares identical jail cells for both youth and adults, another showing Lady Justice stealing a baby from her family, and another criticizing the Youth Criminal Justice Act. It shows the handcuffed arms of a torso wearing a t-shirt that says Violent Youth. On each wrist is a tattoo reading “slap here.” Another cartoon has a boy addressing the bench: “Not guilty by reason of a growth spurt, your Honor.” This one speaks to science behind developing brains and behavior, which our courts have generally ignored. We will analyze these for basic elements of occasion, speaker, characters, setting, audience, purpose, and imagery by annotating the cartoons. Depending on the cartoon, a shorter list of just speaker, audience, occasion and perspective may work. Then students will create their own cartoons by selecting first a juvenile justice issue, then working through the same list of elements: setting, characters, conflict, imagery, and purpose. An effective cartoon can be made from stick figures as long as there are details to support these elements. The Library of Congress has excellent resources for teaching cartoons as primary documents.
Literary Essay Analysis
James Baldwin in his essay Fifth Avenue, Uptown describes his neighborhood in Harlem in 1960. I include the essay for Baldwin’s literary value, and because the essay explains the source of many of the problems that are shared by many American criminal and juvenile justice subjects. His Harlem is one with little to no opportunity for its residents who fall too easily victim to either the over-oppressive police or to drug use. With detail he narrates daily activities of its residents, describes the physical details of the neighborhood and its community members, and analyzes why the neighborhood has become what it is—a slum riddled with poverty, drug use, struggling workers, crime, and police problems, all tainted by “white contamination.” While the content of the essay takes place sixty years ago, we see the foundations of the us versus them mentality of community verses cop conflict that is ubiquitous in the news today. We will read and annotate the essay for theme, relevance to the unit, and tone. Key themes in the essay include race, class, poverty, drug use, conflict b/t police and community, lack of upward mobility, white domination, and the nature of freedom. His tone is at times journalistic, but more prominently political:
“The people, however, who believe that this democratic anguish has some consoling value are always pointing out that So-and-So, white, and So-and-So, black, rose from the slums into the big time. The existence—the public existence—of, say, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. proves to them that America is still the land of opportunity and that inequalities vanish before the determined will.”47
Other passages echo church gospel, such as a “. . .flaming sword laid across this Eden” and “Before the dust has settled or the blood congealed, editorials, speeches, and civil-rights commissions are loud in the land, demanding to know what happened.”48 The weight of the church gives gravity to his message.
Baldwin ends his essay with “Walk through the streets of Harlem and see what we, this nation, have become.” In in-class, one-draft essays, students will write about what he means and how the statement is true today, supported by text and supporting personal evidence.
Fifteen-Minute Activism
I wrote this unit intending to get students thinking about how a certain aspect of their lives has been impacted by policy, culture, and history. Regardless of their perspectives and opinions, through the course of the unit they will participate in fifteen-minute activities that turn them into activists. We will identify key players, such as city council members, legislators, and specific county officials, along with specific issues that might affect my students. Alone or in small groups, students will have fifteen minutes to create and edit a message to tweet, email, or call to a selected recipient. We can mix up the procedure to adapt to groups or individuals or to practice certain kinds modes of writing. All these communications they can send on their own after school if they like. The point is to see how easy it can be to let their voices be heard.
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