Melinda Cooperman on Inspiring Youth with the Constitution
In a special edition of The Washington Times, Melinda Cooperman, associate director of the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, an initiative to address civic disengagement of high school students, discusses her work to get young people excited about the Constitution.
The project mobilizes law students to teach courses on constitutional law and juvenile justice in public high schools in the District of Columbia and Maryland. “We are a part of a powerful movement that seeks to reframe the issues present in the daily lives of youth,” Cooperman writes.
Cooperman believes that the key to success in the project lies in the close-knit relationships between the high school students and the law students, as they grapple with the question of how to teach what the law says to members of disempowered communities where the law may mean something very different in those students’ community.
“The fellows open up the space to connect the frustrations felt by many of their high school students in the face of events like the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and most recently, Vonderrit Myers, Jr., to specific amendments in the Constitution, by validating the experiences of their high school students, and acknowledging that race, class, and privilege have affected the ways in which people interact with the law and the criminal justice system,” Cooperman writes.
Cooperman was invited by the Law Society of Ireland and the Law Society of Scotland to train students who are interested in civic education work. She will also present the Project at the American Bar Association 2015 National Law-Related Education Conference.
Read the full article in The Washington Times.