Teen Court is a peer court for students who have committed first time misdemeanors or for students with excessive absences. Teens who serve as jurors learn more about the judicial branch of US governments and complete service-learning hours. During the 2022-2023 school year, the court served 65 criminal respondents and 25 excessive absentees.
Best Practice 1: Meet a Recognized Need in the Community
To create a more stable community, redirecting negative youth behavior is a major community need. Teen court offers a non-binding, informal alternative to the regular juvenile court process.
Best Practice 2: Achieve Curricular Objectives through Service-Learning
Standard 1.0 Civics: Students shall inquire about the historical development of the fundamental concepts and processes of authority, power, and influence with particular emphasis on civic reasoning in order to become informed, responsible citizens, engage in the political process, and contribute to society.
Best Practice 3: Reflect throughout the Service-Learning Experience
Laurie Plutschak, the program coordinator, and Judge Brown, an adult volunteer, oversee the Teen Court program and facilitate reflection by supporting the senior students as they facilitate discussion before rendering a verdict, and processing with the jurors when the cases conclude.
Best Practice 4: Develop Student Responsibility
Students who have participated in the program provide leadership by mentoring newer participants. Veteran participants worked alongside the program coordinator to monitor and assist the newer jurors with question development and appropriateness. Veteran students have also begun to explore how to include additional student roles to be added next school year.
Best Practice 5: Establish Community Partnerships
The Caroline Human Service Council provides funding for the Teen Court program coordinator. The coordinator also collaborates with the local department of juvenile services, the Sheriff’s department, and other agencies that have the ability to refer first time offenders to the program.
Best Practice 6: Plan Ahead for Service-Learning
The program coordinator works with the county court clerk to develop the Teen Court schedule. Students are taught about the court process and their role as a juror. Planning is in progress to provide program recruitment information to Social Studies teachers. An additional indirect service-learning experience is being created for students to complete a Teen Court promotional module to assist with sharing information about the Teen Court program.
Best Practice 7: Equip students with Knowledge & Skills needed for Service
The program coordinator collaborates with the CCPS Criminal Justice instructor to provide opportunities for students to do mock trials and solicit volunteers to become teen court jurors. Training on how to be an effective juror is provided, and background information is shared that is relevant to cases. The students are taught to ask appropriate questions of the teen respondents and then deliberate and determine a verdict and consequence. Training is provided for the students before each season begins. Training is being developed for participants to also fill roles as Court Bailiff, Court Clerk, and Prosecuting and Defense Attorney.
Howard County Public Schools, 2023
Eighth grade Social Studies students in all middle schools in Howard County completed an advocacy project through an anti-bias curriculum in an effort to create a bridge between middle and high schools. Students collaborated to determine the necessity of community building and how identity and diversity needs might be addressed in high school. Students established activities and policies to suggest to upper school leadership.
Best Practice 1: Meet a Recognized Need in the Community
As eighth grade students move on to various high schools in Howard County, there is a need for a greater sense of community and an identification of cultural and social needs to be met throughout the transition.
Best Practice 2: Achieve Curricular Objectives through Service-Learning
Learning for Justice Anti-bias Framework: The first section is based on identity and diversity: how identities are shaped by cultures and their communities and how people shape communities. The second section gives students strategies for how to look critically at stereotypes without letting them in and to see and be conscious of biases without taking them on.
- Action 16 - Students will express empathy when people are excluded or mistreated because of their identities and concern when they themselves experience bias.
- Action 17 - Students will recognize their own responsibility to stand up to exclusion, prejudice and injustice.
- Action 19 - Students will make principled decisions about when and how to take a stand against bias and injustice in their everyday lives and will do so despite negative peer or group pressure.
- Diversity 6 - Students will express comfort with people who are both similar to and different from them and engage respectfully with all people.
- Diversity 7 - Students will develop language and knowledge to accurately and respectfully describe how people (including themselves) are both different from each other and others in their identity groups.
- Diversity 8 - Students will respectfully express curiosity about the history and lived experiences of others and will exchange ideas and beliefs in an open-minded way.
- Diversity 9 - Students will respond to diversity by building empathy, respect, understanding and connection.
- Diversity 10 - Students will examine diversity in social, cultural, political and historical contexts rather than in ways that are superficial or oversimplified.
- Identity 1 - Students will develop positive social identities based on their membership in multiple groups in society.
- Identity 2 - Students will develop language and historical and cultural knowledge that affirm and accurately describe their membership in multiple identity groups.
- Identity 3 - Students will recognize that people’s multiple identities interact and create unique and complex individuals.
- Identity 4 - Students will express pride, confidence and healthy self-esteem without denying the value and dignity of other people.
- Identity 5 - Students will recognize traits of the dominant culture, their home culture and other cultures and understand how they negotiate their own identity in multiple spaces
- Justice 11 - Students will recognize stereotypes and relate to people as individuals rather than representatives of groups.
- Justice 12 - Students will recognize unfairness on the individual level (e.g., biased speech) and injustice at the institutional or systemic level (e.g., discrimination).
- Justice 13 - Students will analyze the harmful impact of bias and injustice on the world, historically and today.
- Justice 14 - Students will recognize that power and privilege influence relationships on interpersonal, intergroup and institutional levels and consider how they have been affected by those dynamics.
- Justice 15 - Students will identify figures, groups, events and a variety of strategies and philosophies relevant to the history of social justice around the world.
Best Practice 3: Reflect throughout the Service-Learning Experience
Students completed personal reflections on their personal culture via guided worksheets and pre-established processes. Reflection also took place through completed lesson exit tickets, Canvas discussions, small and whole group activities, and discussion questions.
Best Practice 4: Develop Student Responsibility
Students took on leadership roles by leading class and small group discussions around focus topics. Students identified what is needed to create and maintain an inclusive, safe, and supportive school environment, and they provided their suggestions to administrators and other school personnel who have influence on school culture.
Best Practice 5: Establish Community Partnerships
School faculty across Howard County collaborated to create this service-learning experience after identifying the need to build community within high schools that consist of students from various middle schools. Eighth grade students shared their insight with high schools on cultural and social needs, as well as suggestions on how to create community when entering their ninth grade year.
Best Practice 6: Plan Ahead for Service-Learning
Eighth and ninth grade Social Studies teachers worked with Howard County Public School System’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to write the lessons for this service-learning experience. The experience was piloted by three schools during the 2021-22 school year and modifications were made during summer 2022 based on teacher and student feedback. All middle schools implemented the experience during the 2022-23 school year.
Best Practice 7: Equip students with Knowledge & Skills needed for Service
Students received an intentionally created set of lessons and provided with background information, definitions, metacognitive strategies, and processes to build the knowledge and skills necessary for this experience. Many strategies were adapted from resources offered by Learning for Justice.
Maryland Department of Juvenile Services Education Program, 2023
In their Social Studies and Art classes, students at the Lower Eastern Shore Children’s Center learned to knit blankets to be donated to the
Halo Homeless Shelter in Salisbury, Maryland.
Best Practice 1: Meet a Recognized Need in the Community
As a result of this service-learning project, students provided blankets to contribute warmth and comfort to those experiencing homelessness.
Best Practice 2: Achieve Curricular Objectives through Service-Learning
Objectives involving conducting research were addressed, as students researched homelessness and needs in their community.
Best Practice 3: Reflect throughout the Service-Learning Experience
Students reflected on their own knowledge of and, if applicable, experience with housing insecurity. They discussed the contributing factors that result in homelessness and the needs of those experiencing homelessness.
Best Practice 4: Develop Student Responsibility
Students mastered the technique of knitting and were able to independently make blankets.
Best Practice 5: Establish Community Partnerships
Best Practice 6: Plan Ahead for Service-Learning
Facility-approved plastic knitting needles and yarn were obtained, and instructional videos on knitting were identified.
Best Practice 7: Equip students with Knowledge & Skills needed for Service
Students received support and assistance from teachers as they learned the skill of knitting.
Washington County, 2023
Seventh grade students in Washington County completed an advocacy project in which they learned about public policy and impacts on community growth.
Best Practice 1: Meet a Recognized Need in the Community
Through this letter-writing advocacy project, students identified challenges relating to urban/suburban sprawl.
Best Practice 2: Achieve Curricular Objectives through Service-Learning
Social Studies standards relating to public policy, county growth, alternative options, and advocacy were addressed.
Best Practice 3: Reflect throughout the Service-Learning Experience
Students self-reflected on the impact on county growth in their own communities.
Best Practice 4: Develop Student Responsibility
Students conducted research and discussions within the classroom and made presentations at the midpoint and end of the project to share their ideas and new learning.
Best Practice 5: Establish Community Partnerships
Local public officials, city council members, county commissioners, and area businesses involved in the growth of the county were partners in this service-learning experience.
Best Practice 6: Plan Ahead for Service-Learning
This project is embedded in the Washington County curriculum that consists of eight lessons that provide students with choices and options about how to examine the various components of urban sprawl and its impact.
Best Practice 7: Equip students with Knowledge & Skills needed for Service
Students engaged in lessons, had the opportunity to complete their own research, and had discussions with community partners, their classroom teacher, and peers. Students practiced advocacy through letter writing, poster creations, and presentations to the class.
Contact:
Lauren McKinley, M.Ed.
Service-Learning Specialist, Youth Development Branch
Office: (410) 767-0357
lauren.mckinley@maryland.gov
Reginald Burke, M.S.
Director, Youth Development Branch
Office: (410) 767-0313
reginald.burke@maryland.gov