The Kiddos

This is the sixth post in a series about the Washington Irving High School Mock Trial team.  Please click for posts one, two, three, four, and five.

There were eight students who performed this case: Sobeida, Alexis, Geannie, Breanna, Anothonia, Jennifer, Sasha and Robbie.  Kimberly was our backup student--she was on the team last year, but recently started a new job and was no longer able to attend practices.  She ended up saving the team from elimination in pretty extreme situation later in the competition...

Sobeida is the only senior on the team, and she played a lawyer on both the plaintiff and defense side.  She is truly a remarkable girl.  She moved to the United States only five years ago and did not speak a word of English when she arrived. Five years later, she is graduating as the Valedictorian of her class.  She recently received the Gates Scholarship, and is planning on attending Northwestern University in the Fall (unless she gets into Harvard off of their waitlist).  Sobeida has the ability to spin witnesses into a confused mess when she cross examines them.  Her thick Dominican accent put other teams at ease; Their surprised looks were always entertaining when she calmly and brilliantly explained away objections thrown in her direction.  For such a new speaker of English, her command of the language is unreal.

The rest of the team is made up of sophomores.  Alexis, a petite, studious, driven and well spoken young woman.  It is clear that she strives to be excellent in everything she takes on.  She also has earned several nicknames throughout her two years on the mock trial team because of her constantly varying hairstyles.  On the Plaintiff side, she played the role of Chris Crangle.  On the defense side, Alexis played a lawyer, and delivered the opening statement for the case.

Breanna played an attorney on both plaintiff and defense sides. Everything Breanna says when she is performing has gravitas.  Her lines are always delivered like a seasoned pastor.  She speaks naturally, but deliberately and could easily walk into any public speaking situation and hypnotize her audience by her presence.  Her demeanor during practice was a different story, though.  Her habit of speaking to herself when she trying to remember her next question caused a lot of breakout of giggling among both the coaches and students.

Geannie aka "Jenny from the block" is the team's newest player. Geannie came to the team this year with a no nonsense at-ti-tude.  In fact, the girl had so much attitude that the judge in the first round of the competition accused of badgering the witnesses during her cross examinations.  The coaches seriously considered getting her a neck brace to stop her from cocking her head from side to side when she spoke.  Geannie played the role of an attorney on the Plaintiff side, and Alex Allen's role on the defense side. 

Robbie, the only male on the team, played the role of Pat Parker on the plaintiff's side.  Like Sobeida, Robbie is extremely good at thinking on his feet.  He was consistently able to deflect the most difficult questions from crossing attorneys.  

Sasha played the role of Cameron Curtis on the plaintiff's side.  Sasha's long curly hair and big smile match  her personality.  She is a deeply loyal friend to her teammates, and is always interested in what is going on in everyone else's life.

Anthonia and Jennifer-- I will explain these two together because they are two peas in a pod.  They are absolute best friends, always together, and both play witnesses on the defense side.  Anthonia played the role of Ryan Ryder, and Jennifer played the role of IM Feddup.  They are both the quietest players on the team, but they are reliable.  They have made a lot of progress since their freshman years.

This is the little team we had, held strongly together by their friendships with one another. With these eight players, Washington Irving High School prepared to get ready for the first round of competition against Essex Street Academy throughout January. . .

The Case

This is Part 5 in a series about the Washington Irving High School Mock Trial Team.  Please click for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

This year's case was about a parking ban.  On the morning of March 15^th 2010, the seniors at Excelsior High School drove to school and found “No Parking” signs posted on the four streets surrounding the school.  The students had purchased permits to park on those streets, and so they had no where to park that morning.

Chaos ensued.  Students were late to school, angry parents made phone calls, and students who decided to park despite the signs received parking tickets. 

 Alex Allen, the Mayor of Empireville, and the town’s Board of Trustees had imposed the ban at the Village Board meeting only a few days earlier.  The local newspaper reported the change, but most students did not read the paper, and did not know that they would be unable to park.   

Pat Parker, the school’s valedictorian, mock trial team captain and newspaper editor, believes that his Constitutional right to due process was violated with the enactment of the parking ban.  He had a property interest in the parking permit that he purchased, and due process was not followed in removing his right to that property interest.  Pat Parker is the plaintiff in this case. 

It is unclear whether Mayor Allen imposed the ban for political reasons or for safety reasons.  On one hand, there were several reasons that the parked cars around the high school could cause an unsafe environment.  The cars made snow removal difficult, and their weight had put pressure on the pipes underneath the streets for years and could have burst at anytime.  Further, students loitering around the cars and acting recklessly caused neighbors to become concerned for their own safety.

Testifying to the defense’s behalf was Mayor Allen, Ryan Ryder, the commissioner of Public Works, and I.M. Feddup, an Empireville citizen.  Ryder testifies about his experience with the infrastructural problems of Empireville and the eroding streets around the high school.  I.M. Feddup has lived across the street from school since the time it was built, and she is ‘feddup’ with the students parking on her street.  The parking has caused her property value to decline, and has made it unsafe for her grandkids to play outside when they visit.

Then again, the parking ban might have been enacted for political purposes.  A few months before the ban was imposed, Mayor Allen proposed a Capital Improvement Project that targeted the high school.  The project involved hiring school resources officers and replacing the pipes underneath the streets surrounding the high school.  Mayor Allen believed that the school district should have to pay for a substantial portion of both of these initiatives.  In Allen's opinion, it was the students that caused the problems and the schools should be responsible for paying for these initiatives.  He did not consult the school district about this proposal.

The Superintendent of the Excelsior Central School district, Chris Crangle, found out about the plan in the newspaper and was furious.  He wrote a very strongly worded Letter to the Editor in response accusing Mayor Allen of coming “perilously close to extortion” for his demanding that the school district pay for these new initiatives.  The school district had a very tight budget, and the students were not half as bad as the Mayor had painted them in his remarks.  

 In response, Mayor Allen invited Superintendent Crangle to a lunch meeting to discuss these issues.  This meeting ended poorly, and at the next Board of Trustees meeting the parking ban was enacted. The meeting minutes reported that Ryan Ryder stated that the ordinance to ban parking was needed to put pressure on the school district and the superintendent.  Additionally, Pat Parker reported that Mayor Allen told him the parking ban was enacted to get back at Superintendent Crangle.

Testifying on the plaintiff’s side is Pat Parker, Superintendent Crangle and Village Board of Trustee member Cameron Curtis.  Cameron Curtis was the only trustee who voted against the parking ban.  She is also the only trustee who is not part of Mayor Allen’s political party. She made several objections to the parking ban during the meeting but was outvoted by the rest of the trustees despite her complaints.

 -----------------------------------------------------------

As the reader has probably surmised, this case is not that exciting.  City kids don't identify easily with issues surrounding student parking. Still, the Washington Irving Mock Trial team became obsessed with the fact pattern of this case over the months of preparation, and learned how to spin each side of the story to their advantage in competition. 

To read the full case, click here:  http://www.nysba.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PublicResources/LawYouthCitizenshipProgram/MockTrialTournament/2011CASEFINALVERSION11811.pdf

Plans? What Plans?

This is part four in a series about the WIHS Mock Trial team. Please click here for part 1, part 2, and part 3. 

So it turns out that our plans went out the window pretty rapidly, as usual, this year. 

Throughout the preseason, students slowly started dropping off the team, one by one.  Absenteeism meant that we had to repeat lessons many times and our neatly laid out plans were soon left in shambles.  By the start of 2010, we were back down to our minimum of eight students once again with one backup player who couldn’t attend practices because she recently started a new a job.  We had barely covered the material we wanted to cover.

 Although the team of eight was committed and determined, it was rare that the entire team was ever at practice together at the same time.  Train delays, family obligations, sicknesses, and a host of other problems prevented the the team from having a practice where the all the players were in attendance until a few days before the first competition. Often times, students would not call to say they weren't coming to practice, which infuriated all the coaches. I had to constantly remind myself that even with all their real world experience and problems, the students are children.  They are still learning what it means to be responsible. 

The dwindling numbers and absenteeism sparked many conversations among the coaches about disbanding the team.  We all had a lot on our plates, and we were unsure if the time would be worth it.  We didn’t want another season of logging hundreds of combined hours to the program without seeing the students progress past round two. 

It wasn't just the students though--the coaches also had a lot of problems getting to the practices.  The demands of being an attorney at a top law firm are substantial.  It requires long and unpredictable hours.  This hindered all of the coaches’ abilities to come to practice on time (or at all).  Personally, I also had a lot of trouble attending all of the practices. I was in the middle of making arrangements for my dad to move out of a nursing home and back into the community, so I had to do a lot of running back and forth between New York City and Hartford.  Every Wednesday and Friday emails circulated between the coaches to piece together our schedules and to make sure at least one adult would be in the room at all times. 

 In this way, the students and coaches are similar.  Both groups have chaotic and unpredictable lives.  As much both sides would hate to admit it, I think this dynamic created some understanding between both sides about demands on time and the priority that Mock Trial plays in a student and coach’s life.  It was a huge priority, but many things took precedence over practice.

Still, most students on the team had at least a year of experience to help them through the season.  This experience would prove to be invaluable to them in first few months of 2011.

Recruiting

This is part 3 in a series about the WIHS Mock Trial Team. Please click for Part 1 and Part 2

Of course, all of our planning at the beginning of the season would be for naught without a team.  Therefore, the coaches also spend time recruiting students to participate in Mock Trial.  Some coaches go to WIHS and speak to classes about the club. I speak to teachers about recruiting their most dedicated students. I also set up a table for Mock Trial at the afterschool activities fair.  We encourage returning students to recruit their friends.  We try to think of every avenue possible to get more students involved.

According to the rules of the New York State Bar Association, there needs to be at least eight students to field a team.  Ideally, a team should have twelve to fifteen players.  There are a total of twelve parts that can be played: there are three lawyers and three witnesses on both the plaintiff and defense side ((3+3)*2=12).  If there are twelve players on a team, each person has only one role to play.  Any additional students serve as backup players.  On a competition day, six students are needed to play--only one side performs at a time.

We were all relieved when fifteen students showed up the first day of practice.  We have trouble retaining students from season to season, and there is usually a large dropout rate throughout the course of the season.  Last year, we had a student drop off the team only days before the first round of competition (via Facebook message, no less), reducing our number to seven.  We scrambled to find a warm body to fill his role so that the months of practice would not go to waste for the rest of the team.  The coaches ended up practicing with the new student the entire weekend before the competition, staying with her until almost midnight on a Sunday night to prepare her.  We did not want any repeats of that this season. The fifteen faces in the room made everyone optimistic. 

Students are not the only people we need to run a mock trial program, though.  We always need coaches, and they are not easy to find.  With every year attorneys stay at the firm, they are saddled with more work and have less time for volunteering.  I have seen this happen time and time again with my volunteers.  People volunteer a lot during their first year, and less during their second and third years.  I rarely have anyone beyond a fourth year turn up for my programs. 

This year, we got lucky.  We got a new coach.  Yana and Manoj were on their way home from Cleary one night and discussing Mock Trial during their car ride.  The students had just completed a homework assignment. Yana wanted to talk about it, Manoj didn’t.  This was pretty typical of interactions between Yana and Manoj.  Luckily for them, they were sharing the car with a first year associate named Leza.  When Leza heard Yana and Manoj talking about Mock Trial, she mentioned that she had participated in mock trial in high school.  Attacking her from both sides, Yana and Manoj pitched the nearly impossible sell of volunteering for Mock Trial to Leza.  By the end of the car ride, Leza was the newest coach of the Mock Trial team. 

Leza certainly didn’t know what she was getting into when she agreed to be a coach.  If she did, she would not have agreed to take on the responsibility.  Luckily for us, she did, and I’m fairly certain she is happy about that decision now.   It’s nearly impossible for me to sell mock trial to my volunteers.  Telling most attorneys at Cleary that they’ll have to commit to volunteering about 10-15 hours a week and they’ll run as fast as they can in the other direction. The attorneys at Cleary already have a ridiculous amount of work on their plates.  Mock Trial is by far the largest time commitment a volunteer can take on in any of the programs that I run at Cleary.  But—once you’re hooked, it’s hard to back out of the commitment.  The coaches of the Mock Trial team become attached to the students.  It turns out to be an extremely rewarding experience, but at a high cost.

With all of this in order, the coaches were optimistic about the year.  We had our students, we had our coaches, and we had a plan.  It was just a matter of holding it all together—and maybe we could actually do it this time.

Our Best Laid Plans

This is the second post in a series about the Washington Irving High School Mock Trial team. Please click here to see the first post.

Each season begins with the coaches.  Before students return to school, the coaches begin to plan the mock trial season.

When the coaches meet for the first time, they first discuss the need to recruit more coaches.  Then they discuss the need to recruit more students. The program would not be able to exist without people, after all.  More on this later.

There are several Mock Trial coaches:  Yana and Manoj are both third year associates, and both started coaching the team together when they started at Cleary.  Shiwon is a fifth year associate who also started coaching when he first joined Cleary.  Leza is a first year associate.  I also coach the team. I am the only non-lawyer, and have coached for four years.

Before the coaches meet with students for the first time, we discuss what we will do differently to improve upon the year before. At this meeting, we write out a list of topics we feel are necessary to teach the students, and determine the dates we will teach each topic.  The coaches then make lesson plans for each of these topics.  The lessons we planned to teach this year were the rules of evidence, objections (and responses to objections), opening and closing statements, and direct and cross examinations.  We also chose a practice case for the students to prepare for during the preseason.

Once we have our game plan, we start meeting with the students.  Our preseason starts in the beginning of November.  This is when the coaches start to teach the planned lessons, and this is when the students start preparing for their practice trial. Practices are held every Wednesday and Friday from 3:00 to 6:00 PM during the preseason.

Our regular season begins each December after Manoj and I visit the New York State Bar Association to receive the new case. This is always a highly anticipated moment, and especially so this year.  Last year’s case on securities fraud elicited several rounds of angry emails between the coaches, and generated general frustration throughout the year.

Shiwon: "Can you believe they have to learn about pyramid schemes?"

Manoj: "Not just pyramid schemes, they have to learn about trade derivatives.'

Yana: "Why can't we just have a plain old murder case?"

To our relief, this year's case was about a parking ban (Click here to see the NYSBA case). While it would require the students to learn about civics and Constitutional Law (something we would struggle with throughout the season), we were relieved that we would not need to teach them the intricacies of the financial meltdown of 2008, precipitated by Bernie Madoff (or “Bernie Madlock” in the Mock Trial case).  We also thought the subject matter would be a bit dry and irrelevant to city kids. Our students don’t drive—they take the subway.

Once we receive the new case, the preseason ends, and we start preparing the team for the competition.  In January, February and March, the team meets each Saturday from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM, in addition to the two other practices each week.

Historically, the WIHS season ends in early March after the second round of competition.  As you've likely surmised, our season did not end in March this year.

Click Here for Part 3

The Little Team that Could

This is the first post in a series about the Washington Irving High School Mock Trial Team

"I don't think you understand.  We goin' to Albany."

Geannie must have said this one hundred times over the past four months.  She is one of the newest members of the Washington Irving High School Mock Trial team, and was full of idealism and hope throughout the 2010 Mock Trial season.

Washington Irving High School is an overcrowded and persistently failing school with a chronic attendance problem located near Union Square in Manhattan. Over the past five years the graduation rate averaged out to around 36%, and the majority of students qualify for free lunch.  Each day, students must walk through metal detectors before heading to their classes for the day.  Currently, the school is on the Department of Education's list to be either closed or "radically changed" because of its dismal performance record.  Of the students who graduate, most will go on to the City University system, whose schools do not have a great graduation rate either. To put it plainly--the cards are stacked against the students who attend WIHS.

Still, there are glimmers of hope. There is a new and enthusiastic principal at the school, and there are several businesses and individuals in the surrounding community that are invested Washington Irving's success.  Cleary Gottlieb has been one of those entities since 1991.  In recent years, a small handful of students have been accepted into elite universities across the country and have started to inspire their younger classmates.  In 2010, the graduation rate jumped to 55%.  In the last two years, the school has received a C on its progress report after years of receiving Fs.  Still, even on the "C" report cards, the section that evaluates student performance is still an F.  Less than 2.7% of high schools city-wide received the same score on their student performance criteria.

Every year, lawyer coaches at Cleary Gottlieb have spent countless hours preparing the WIHS Mock Trial team.  The team competes in a city-wide competition sponsored by the New York State Bar Association.  There are eight rounds of competition throughout the five boroughs of New York City.  Private, parochial and public schools all compete in the tournament.  Every school competes in the first two rounds.  The top 17-64 schools from those rounds will compete in the third round.  The top 16 schools go directly to round four.

After the first two rounds, the tournament becomes a single elimination competition--if you lose, you're out.  The winner of the city-wide tournament travels to Albany to compete at the statewide competition. Despite several years of late hours and constant coaching by Cleary attorneys, Irving's team never made it past the second round of the competition.  They usually lost one round, and won a round, and didn't have enough combined points to push them into the third round.  Until this year.

Click Here to go to Part 2

Twitterspeak

"'You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost sadly.  'Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak.  I've read some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations.  In your heart you would prefer to stick to Oldspeak with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning.  You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words.  Did you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?....Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?...Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meanings rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten...The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.'"
-Syme to Winston in Gorege Orwell's 1984.

"Brevity is the soul of wit"
-Lord Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet

"THANKS!!!!! N Y MY NAM HAD 2 B NEAR LAST MAURYA LML" (Translation: "Thanks! And why (did) my name had (have) to be near last Maurya? Laughing Mad Loud." )
-A student, my facebook wall.

The Economy of Language

Since I started using Twitter, I've become more connected to the world around me by following several major news organizations and individuals who tweet commentary about current events.  However, Twitter and other more modern forms of communication impose an economy of language on users such that each word becomes a good in the marketplace of ideas and complex issues are said in catch phrases that don't always explain full meanings. When I speak about the economy of language, I don't mean to limit my argument to just Twitter. I also mean the language used in text messaging, and to some extent Facebook.  I will refer to this new form of language as "Twitterspeak," because Twitter currently imposes the most strict character limit of these forms of communication.

My ambivalence towards these forms of communication comes from the economy of language they impose and what that means for human communication, particularly for young people still learning how to effectively communicate in a written format.

Brevity is the soul of wit, but the enemy of thoughtfulness.

Some argue that forcing a writer to be more succinct produces better writing. Paul Krugman of the New York Times recently wrote this blog post on the subject.  He believes length constraints force him to be more concise and make each word more meaningful. Every paper returned to me in my first philosophy class said "Eliminate Needless Words" boldly in red on each page.  Over time, I learned the importance of being clear in my writing.  I am supposed to carefully select words to maximize meaning and precision.  Like an economy, I am striving to reach the appropriate intersection of cost and benefit.  I have fallen out of practice a bit since college, but I know it is always something to aspire to when writing.  Twitter, in the extreme, forces me to do this.
  
I believe in the immense networking power and the free exchange of ideas that is facilitated by Twitter and Facebook.  Recently it became clear that these mediums are so powerful that they are able to catalyze revolutions.  However, it remains unclear whether or not they will be effective in helping citizens form a plan of governance.  It's easy to write "Overthrow Mubarak" in under 140 characters, but it's much more difficult to exchange ideas on the formation of government in the same length. When Speaker Boehner tweets something like "House passed bill 2 keep govt running, cut spending; if Sen. Reid won't pass it, we'll pass shorter one 2 keep govt running, cut spending" there is very little complexity in the expression.  Twitterspeak is similar to politicians arguing in sound bites and catch phrases.  No one can give an in-depth reflection on fixing the economy in sixty seconds.  One might argue that tweets can contain links for further information, or that a compilation of tweets can give an idea about a trend that is occurring, but a tweet in itself rarely can convey a complex thought. 

Code Switching  and Neuropathways

Just because these modes of communication are short does not not make them inherently bad. Not everything that needs to be said needs to be complex.  The problem arises when people use these short statements as their primary mode of communication.

 My students use Facebook, Twitter, and text obsessively.  They write messages that make some sense in  Twitterspeak.  However, when they need to produce a piece of writing with fully formed sentences and thoughts, they are often unable to do so. In this case, the argument that being more concise produces better writing fails because it presupposes that the user knows how to use the English language properly in the first place.  Instead of writing "eliminate needless words," I find myself commenting "spell out complete words" on the tops of their essays.

Perhaps I am not being fair. I am making a value judgment on the importance of stringing a coherent sentence together. Maybe these values are elitist and antiquated, and maybe we are moving to a new form of communication.  Who am I to say that one form of communication is better than another?  Languages have shifted before, and they are bound to do so again.  

In graduate school, I learned that successful students are able to "code switch"--they have the ability to switch back in forth between one dialect or language to another when it is appropriate to do so.  For example, I can code switch between writing "hahaha's" and "LOLs" and ":)" in instant messenger, and more formal language when it is appropriate, such as in an academic paper or formal letter.  Students who are growing up in the generation behind me have been exposed to "Twitterspeak" at a much earlier age, so my norm and their norms of communication are different. If a student lacks experience or knowledge of more formal writing, he will be unable to code switch.  When I am reading a student's essay, I do not think I should be reading "LOL"s in place of "This is funny," "ur" in place of "your" or "you're," "IDK" in place of "I don't know" or "n" in place of the word "and."  Unfortunately, students that are growing up in an Internet generation without a lot of exposure to formal writing might understand "Twitterspeak" as the correct form because that is what they are used to reading. 

These mediums of communication are constantly reinforced.  Students instant message, text, and tweet more than they use the phone.  They no longer pen love letters, or even email that much for that matter.  Instead, they send an @tweet and cram as much into 140 characters as possible.  As John Stuart Mill said "The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used." Moreover, the teachings of modern neuroscience help explain what I read in student essays.  With each repetition of Twitterspeak, the child's ability to Twitterspeak grows and improves.  Sadly, my students don't get nearly enough "reps" at writing actual sentences.  These behaviors all build mental pathways.  The longer form writing pathways are generally shoddy.  


The danger of this is that the absence of well executed expression leads to an absence of in-depth and analytical thought (see Orwell's quote and article linked below).  We should only teach our students how to be concise after they have learned to be long winded.  The problem, then, does not lie with Twitter, Facebook, or texting as modes of communication, but with parenting and education. 

It is possible to teach a student to read and write well, even in a society that has begun to function in an economy of words.  Teachers and parents are doing it everyday, and there are plenty of students who can code-switch between "Twitterspeak" and formal English.  This use of language is only a current manifestation of an age old problem, after all.  There have been several critiques on the use of colloquial languages throughout history.  I, for one, will not be giving up Twitter, or my Twitterspeak, but I will be making a more concerted effort to teach students how to write, and therefore think, clearly.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers."


-George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm