When Sonia Masih, a secondary school history and geography teacher, was asked to begin teaching the first law class offered at her school, she was somewhat apprehensive.\u00a0 With no background in law and no colleagues at the school she could turn to for help, she had to start from scratch to devise a teaching strategy.\u00a0 The first year was extremely challenging, but going into her second year she discovered the OJEN\/ROEJ website and it\u2019s over 200 teaching resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cOJEN resources were a lifesaver,\u201d Sonia recalls. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have any background in the subject you have to teach academically.\u00a0 You just follow a text book.\u00a0 The day to day interactions of law are hard to teach. Bringing legal concepts to life is a challenge. OJEN resources help to bring a human element to legal processes.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her third year, Sonia introduced mock trials to her class and they were an instant hit with her students. As an additional incentive, she rewarded the groups with the highest marks with an opportunity to perform their mock trial in front of the whole school. This mock trial demonstration became a school tradition and it didn\u2019t take long for enrolment in law to grow to the point where a second and third class were added.<\/p>\n
It was, however, the participation of a Crown lawyer volunteering to prepare her students for a mock trial that took law classes from being fun to life changing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe students were in awe,\u201d Sonia said. \u201cMany of them didn\u2019t know the difference between defence and Crown counsel at the time.\u00a0 When she started describing what her role was, about the discretion of the Crown and the burden of proof, they were fascinated.\u201d<\/p>\n
It turned out that the students weren\u2019t the only ones inspired. She credits this Crown with her own decision to leave teaching and enrol in law school. She started studying for her L-SATS while teaching full time and coaching for mock trials.<\/p>\n
Many of Sonia\u2019s students plan to study law.\u00a0 Now she can report to them what law school is like.<\/p>\n
I met Sonia during an internship she did with OJEN\/ROEJ from the University of Ottawa Law School. Her projects with us included developing teaching resources for high school law teachers, something she knew a little about!<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of miss teaching,\u201d she admitted, but I could tell she loved the new path she had embarked on.<\/p>\n
Nadine Demoe – Communications Manager<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Sonia Masih, a secondary school history and geography teacher, was asked to begin teaching the first law class offered at her school, she was somewhat apprehensive.\u00a0 With no background in law and no colleagues at the school she could turn to for help, she had to start from scratch to devise a teaching strategy.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","inline_featured_image":false,"ub_ctt_via":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-ojen-blog","tag-justice-education"],"acf":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/ojen2024.turnbull.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Sonia.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"adnan","author_link":"https:\/\/ojen2024.turnbull.co\/en\/author\/adnan"},"yoast_head":"\n