City Neighbors students take over a courtroom
This is a guest entry from my editor, Patricia Fanning:
Eighth-graders at Baltimore's City Neighbors Charter School had to ditch their plans to study the Sixties on a field trip downtown when Monday was declared a snow day. But things turned out for the best the next day when the seventh- and eighth-grade classes of teacher Peter French got to see each other in action and compare results.
More than two dozen students in both grades re-enacted the trial of Lt. William Calley, who was accused of murdering civilians at My Lai in Vietnam. The back-to-back trials were decided very differently by a jury of mostly parents. The eighth-graders got a hung jury. For a view of their re-enactment, take a look at photographer Amy Davis’s photo gallery. The seventh-graders got a unanimous conviction. Why the contrast?
In a critique after the cases were heard, the jurors leveled with the students. "The eighth-grade brought a lot to the table," said one, revealing that the panel had gone 9-1 to acquit. In that case, the soldier’s orders were made clear and the evidence laid out that he was essentially following them. In the seventh-graders’ version, Calley "didn’t really know what his orders were," a juror told them. (In real life, he was found guilty and held under house arrest until 1974.)
City Neighbors students responded with an assessment of their own, saying the exercise made them think. Another said "It was fun." And the parent who presided, Trinisa Brown, rarely had to demand, "Order in the court." Sitting in the chair normally occupied by Baltimore Circuit Judge Evelyn Omega Cannon, Brown was firm from the bench. She even told her daughter, Tacara Brown, one of the seventh grade prosecutors, to stop badgering a witness.
Baltimoresun.com's 
