The New Rochelle Bar Association is proud to announce that our Lawyer in the Classroom program relaunches today after a two-year hiatus caused by COVID school closures. Today and Monday we are sending 34 working lawyers into every 5th grade classroom in the New Rochelle public schools, where we will reach a total of some 685 students for a total of four hours each over the next five weeks.
Recognized and awarded by the New York State Bar Association, this is true teaching and learning for students and our lawyers, who are volunteering their time. This is not a one-off on “how to become a lawyer” or “a day in the life of a lawyer.” Rather, we have a uniform curriculum and a detailed syllabus with timed lesson plans (like real teachers) on the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and this year focusing upon the Fourth Amendment, Searches and Seizures, the rights of students and the impact of new technologies on this area of the law. Our lawyers prepared for the program in a 1-1/2 hour continuing education seminar where they were guided on the substantive law as well as on how to be effective teachers of 5th graders. We also are furnishing every student and teacher with a pocket edition of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, courtesy of the New York State Bar Association.
We are privileged to be able to offer this program to the City School District of New Rochelle and we appreciate the partnership and support that we have received from every 5th grade teacher in the District, as well as their principals and central Administrators. We are especially pleased to be able to restore this program in the month that we are celebrating the Centennial of the New Rochelle Bar Association on May 25, at which we also will host the Judges of the New York Court of Appeals, the highest appellate court in the State of New York. There still is time to join us for that festive occasion.
If you have, or know, a 5th grader in the New Rochelle public schools, that student will be engaged by one of our classroom instructors starting today. I have the distinct honor of being the First Vice President of the New Rochelle Bar Association and the coordinator of this program for our lawyer instructors and the School District.