Discovering Justice Field Trips
In-Courthouse
Discovering Justice Field Trips: Grade K-8
Field trips with Discovering Justice invite students to explore the workings of the courthouse as well as the themes and ideals of justice and democracy. While on a guided tour featuring interactive courtroom activities, students are encouraged to view, analyze, and discuss key features of the courthouse and the operations of the justice system.
Meet a Judge
As part of Discovering Justice field trips, students get to enter an actual courtroom and participate in engaging activities and discussions around justice, discussing an age-appropriate theme, and engaging in a Q&A activity with a judge or other courthouse professional. Presented with a hypothetical legal scenario, students work together to debate and decide: what is the just outcome, and why? Discovering Justice also provides classroom activity guidelines for teachers to generate student questions and prepare for the field trip, as well as post-trip reflection activities.
Program Impact
Through the program, students increase their understanding of the functions, roles and structures in the American justice system, expanding their justice-related vocabulary and participating in activities both in the courtroom and the classroom. Field trips help students to cultivate their identities as active members of our democracy and to see the justice system not as a stagnant institution, but something they can utilize and engage with through civic action.
