Monday, December 10, 2012

Integrating Practice and Theory: The SRO-Led CDO Forensics Course

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One of the activities of the School Resource Officer (SRO) is teaching in the classroom.  One of our bloggers asked to see a lesson plan for one of these classes.

We don't have that.  We do have a discussion of the Forensics course that the SRO facilitates at CDO.  It is worth sharing with you.

"CDO has a year-long Forensics' program that is co taught with science teachers and the School Resource Officer (SRO) (currently Officer Shawn Benjamin). CDO currently has one class and therefore the SRO is in the classroom daily. This program has been a tremendous success and uses all the best practices of Law Related Education (LRE).  For example, legal literacy focusing on civil, criminal and constitutional themes, practical information about the law and public policy and concepts underlying our constitutional democracy. It also teaches the students critical thinking, decision-making, problem solving, communication, cooperation and reasoning. It utilizes hands on, active teaching strategies with mock crime scenes and numerous lab activities. It has community resource persons (Police officers, University of Arizona associate curator, crime lab criminalists, Anthropologists, crime scene specialist, Forensic Pathologist) who not only do presentations in the classrooms but also facilitate field trips which have included the Tucson Police Department crime lab and Pima County Office of the Medical examiner and helped judge the Arizona Foundation for Legal Services and Education (AZFLSE) endorsed State Forensics competition hosted by CDO in the spring of 2012 where 6 teams from all over the state of Arizona competed. CDO has competed in the regional and State AZFLSE CSI Competitions every year since the program started in 2007 and has either placed 1st or 2nd.
This program has incorporated many of the other programs at CDO; to include the school newspaper (monthly updates), drama class (role players for crime scene), has been used in our learning challenged class as a critical thinking component, in which the SRO participated in the classroom brainstorming session as well as promoting the science classes as there are perquisites to the class (Chemistry, Biology and Physics). Students continuously inquire as to what science classes they need to take in order to take the Forensics class as an upper classmen.

Funding for this program has been obtained from grants written by the SRO, community donations through tax credit funds, the CDO parent organization and community non-profit organizations to include, the Oro Valley Optimist Club and the Oro Valley Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #53 along with many donations from the business community of Oro Valley."

Our thanks to Officer Benjamin of the The Oro Valley Police Department for providing this for us.
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