Fourteen-year-old Amiah Hanson thinks she might want to be an attorney when she grows up. The Mountain Middle School eighth grader was in luck when her humanities class started talking about doing a mock trial.
“I was excited to dig,” Hanson said. “It’s all about bringing up a reasonable argument: You got to have evidence.”
Hanson was one of about 60 middle-schoolers who buzzed around the second floor of the La Plata County Courthouse on Thursday afternoon, most of them dressed for the occasion. Boys wore dress shirts – some untucked – and ties; girls wore dresses or dress pants and a blouse.
Students played judges, bailiffs, attorneys and witnesses. Every line was scripted. Each role was researched. Parents played the jury and gave verdicts. Each mock trial was held without adult instruction.
Rachel Tillotson, 14, played a judge in a mock lawsuit brought by the people of Durango against the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, alleging the train started the 416 Fire. Tillotson watched court cases before and thought judgeship would be an easy job. She was sorely mistaken, she said.
“I had to learn all the regulations of the court; I had to learn how not to care,” Tillotson said. “(Judges) don’t have it easy.”
Mountain Middle School teachers Liz Cartwright and Pete Basinger coordinated the project, working with students for weeks to teach them about the fundamentals of the United States government, Basinger said.
Students chose the topics that would be argued – D&SNG and the cause of 416 Fire, Facebook and invasion of privacy, and the National Rifle Association and gun violence – a tactic Basinger said was done to encourage engagement.
Students are stakeholders in each issue, Basinger said. This familiarity with issues encouraged engagement, something not easy to elicit from eighth graders, he said.
“We’re not necessarily directly addressing origins of government, we’re looking at a very thin slice of structures and functions,” Basinger said. “The purpose of project-based learning is to really grab onto an idea and get as deep into it as possible, that’s where we get the student engagement.”
Claire Paul, 14, played a defense attorney representing D&SNG in a fictional case charging the train with starting the 416 Fire, which burned 54,000 acres last summer. Some Durango residents filed a lawsuit last fall, claiming sparks from a coal-fired train started the fire. That case has yet to go to trial.
Paul said she wanted to be on the defense team because she hasn’t been swayed by either side of the issue. Everyone wanted to be a prosecutor, she said.
But after opening statements, cross-examination of fictitious witnesses, including D&SNG owner Al Harper, and closing arguments, the jury decided.
Not guilty.
“It was definitely an educational experience walking into someone’s profession and trying to figure it out,” Paul said.
bhauff@durangoherald.com
