Our Extracurricular Activities
My personal favorite sport is volleyball!
With twelve children, it should not be surprising that my family has been involved in a lot of different activities: from a variety of sports (everything from soccer to rugby, lacrosse, volleyball, and more), to Scouts, Drama, and even a brief stint of 4-H. But amongst all the other wonderful extra-curricular activities that various ones participated in throughout their school years, there is only one that they all did at least once, and some as many as five or six times: Mock Trial (or Youth Judicial, as it is called in the program here in Alabama).
Mock Trial Pioneers
My oldest kids were on one of the first ever homeschool teams in the state of Texas, and four years later one of my sons started the first ever homeschool team in the state of Alabama. And we continued the Mock Trial teams through our homeschool group long after that son graduated from high school, college, and law school. If you count the early years when I was more of an advisor than a coach (my son served as the real coach for the first few years in Alabama), this will be my 21st year coaching high school Mock Trial.
Coaching Mock Trial
Of all the things I’ve done in the homeschool community I don’t think anything has brought me more joy than coaching Mock Trial. (Though, of course, in 20 years of doing this, it’s brought me a few aggravations as well. But compared to the positives, the negatives have been few and far between.)
Not Just for Future Lawyers
I’m very happy that all of my children (as well as three of my nieces and dozens of other homeschooled students) have been able to partake of this amazing activity. For those who want to become lawyers, it is practically a must. But even for the more numerous students who have no interest in going into law, it is an amazing experience! It helps students work on their public speaking skills as well as their logic and quick thinking. And it introduces them to how our judicial system should work.
Big Time Commitment
It’s not an easy extracurricular activity – it takes up several hours a week for about six weeks each fall. (At least in Alabama. In other states, the Mock Trial competition occurs later in the year.) We’ve gone up against teams that do tryouts for spots on their teams, but we’ve never felt the need to do that. In our twenty years of competing in Mock Trial in Alabama we only had try outs once – and that was when I had two students that both wanted to give the Opening Statement on their team. We had to settle that with a “write off.” But I’ve never had to turn down a high schooler who wanted to participate with us. (We’ve occasionally had to fill team spots with 7th or 8th graders, and I haven’t always had spots for younger siblings that have wanted to participate with us.)
How Badly Do We Want to Win?
We certainly don’t mind winning, and have accomplished seven first places in our twenty years, along with a reasonable number of second and third places. But we don’t go down to Montgomery determined to win at all costs. In fact, I’ve told my students I would rather them forget their facts on the witness stand, or miss an objection as a lawyer than to pull some of the cheap shots that we’ve seen some other teams pull. Many years ago we had a trial that was so bad that I had to write a small booklet about the experience to help us all get through the emotional trauma. That booklet, A Trial of a Trial, now available on both Amazon and CurrClick, has since become a useful teaching tool for our new students and other new students in our area. But again, the good news is that experiences like that are rare.
A Great High School Experience to Try
If you have a chance to try Mock Trial or Youth Judicial with your students, I would strongly recommend it! I don’t think you’ll regret it.
Happy learning!
Cathy