May 31, 2006
Queens, NY (May 31, 2006) -
St. John’s University School of Law students Dennis Shelton and
Jodi Lucena have won coveted positions teaching in the new,
five-week Legal Outreach/Ron Brown Summer Program for students
entering high school, to be held at the School of Law. The two law
students—who were selected from 16 applicants— will teach the
curriculum, which includes weekly field trips to expose the 24
enrolled youngsters, all from disadvantaged or underserved Queens
communities, to legal-career opportunities.
The youngsters, who are going into the ninth grade in the fall,
will begin their specially designed classes July 3, 2006. By using
law-related texts, and studying cases and scenarios presented to
them, the participants are expected to enhance their reading
comprehension, reasoning, and critical-thinking skills. The program
will be modeled after successful summer programs that Legal
Outreach runs at Columbia School of Law and Brooklyn Law
School.
As paid coordinators of the Legal Outreach Summer Program at St.
John’s School of Law, Dennis Shelton, who’s going into his third
year of law school, and Jodi Lucena, who’s entering her second,
will undergo several weeks of intensive training before the
high-school students arrive. They’ll teach them criminal procedure
and law, and trial advocacy skills, so that towards the end of the
program, the young scholars will be able to argue a mock trial in
the law school’s Belson Moot Court Room.
Presentations about various types of legal careers are planned,
and the law school is looking for many alumni to either address the
students at St. John’s or host them at their offices for a few
hours on Fridays.
Law Students Will Rely on Their
Skills
Dennis Shelton is relying on the skills he’s acquired as a member
of the Law School’s trial-advocacy team to help him instruct the
youngsters in the new summer program. He hopes to pursue a career
in criminal law, which is the major focus of the summer program
curriculum. “Auditioning for this position was challenging,” he
relates. “I had to teach a sample class to the judges, who
pretended to be difficult students just to see if I could handle
it!”
Jodi Lucena, who taught eighth-grade history classes in
Brooklyn, and in a Blackstone, MA, high school prior to attending
law school, attributes her selection to her three years of
experience as a teacher. She received a Master’s Degree in
Education from Pace University while participating in the New York
City Teaching Fellows program.
“The Legal Outreach program has its own pedagogical formula for
us to follow as instructors,” she says. Adding that she’s attending
law school so that she can get the training she needs to “fight for
educational and civil rights,” she says she’s looking forward to
“working with kids who want to be there” in the summer program.
“Law is a mechanism for attracting young people to the world of
higher education,” says James O’Neal, Executive Director and
Co-Founder of Legal Outreach, a New York-based enrichment program
that’s been operating for 23 years. “The participants are
enthusiastic and motivated secondary-school students who may not be
getting the support they need to maximize their potential.”
The program’s participants are recruited by middle- school
principals and guidance counselors familiar with the Legal Outreach
program, he explains. “We go into the schools and present a sample
lesson the students receive if they participate in the summer
program,” he continues. “Our program engages the students because
it’s interactive”
The students and their parents were interviewed by Legal
Outreach staff before the final selections were made, he adds,
because the parents must be supportive for the program to succeed.
The students will be assigned cases to read and homework to do
during their summer evenings. There’s also a business dress code
they must adhere to in class to help create an ambience of
professionalism.
Most of the students in the program are from the Jamaica or St.
Alban’s sections of Queens, says Tamika Edwards, Legal Outreach’s
Educational Director, who adds that they’re from eight different
public and Catholic schools.
Legal Outreach Program Builds
Skills
Although three students who participated in the Legal Outreach
program have gone on to become attorneys, and three are in law
school now, O’Neal says, “The summer law program is a great way for
young people to build skills,” regardless of whether the students
go into law. Students who complete the summer program have the
opportunity to enter Legal Outreach’s college-prep program known as
College Bound, “a multi-faceted enrichment program that gives
students the skills to matriculate and succeed in college.”
He adds that he hopes to be able to launch a college-bound
component to the St. John’s program as “100 percent of students
who’ve gone through it go on to college.”
School of Law Professor Leonard
Baynes directs the Ron Brown Center for Civil Rights and
Economic Development, which runs several programs—including the
acclaimed Summer Prep Program that introduces college students to
law school curriculum—to encourage economically disadvantaged youth
or those who are first-generation students to consider becoming
lawyers.