A group of students traveled from the unincorporated town of Animas, south of Lordsburg in New Mexico’s Bootheel, to compete at a mock trial competition in Des Moines, Iowa, earlier this month and one Animas High School student Perla Cuevas, was recognized out of the hundreds who competed nationally. The opportunity came after winning the annual state competition for the Gene Franchini New Mexico High School Mock Trial Program in Albuquerque in March. Here is one of the students, Ayslee Davenport, who is 16, presenting part of a case during a rehearsal at school.
“I want to start by reminding you that assumptions are no more than imaginary truths. Good afternoon, Your Honor and members of the jury. My name is Ayslee Davenport, and I, along with my co-counsel, proudly represent our client, Bobby Gurule, in today's case,” Davenport said.
Less than a 100 students attend Animas High School. Davenport already sounds like a lawyer, but she's only 16 years old. I talked with Alysha Wagley, who teaches both language arts and social studies at Animas High School. She also coaches the mock trial team. I asked her about the importance of the students at Animas High School taking the state championship. Wagley emphasized the historic win the students made.
“This is a competition that ranges from 5A to 1A, all competing against each other. As a matter of fact, since for the past 26 years, only large schools from the metro [Albuquerque] area have been state champs in mock trial. And we are the first small school to ever win,” Wagley said.
I asked Wagley what she did to work that kind of magic with the students at Animas High School. She gave all the credit to the students.
“Lots of hard work and dedication,” she said.
I also spoke with Michaela Jarvis, who is 18. Jarvis went to the state mock trial competition and, when I spoke with her, she was getting ready for the Iowa trip. Jarvis said participating in mock trial enabled her to pick her career path.
“I do plan to work in the judicial system some way,” she said. “I want to become a forensic psychologist, which is a lot of working with the witnesses and the defense and seeing how they can, if they can, go to trial and see what the outcome can be.”
I told Jarvis I was impressed that at 18, she knows what a forensic psychologist is.
“Well, it started out actually with mock trial,” she said. “My freshman year when I first started, I was a witness and I played a forensic psychologist.”
I also spoke with Kristen Leeds, executive director of the Center for Civic Values, based in Albuquerque. She told me that mock trial improves the students' critical thinking skills, their communication skills, and it teaches them to think on their feet.
“Especially to be quick and clear and speaking evidence-based things. It builds confidence. They find their voice and learn how to use it effectively because not only are they going against another team, but they are doing this in front of sitting justices or retired justices. Also, there are three scoring judges who score the performance, so it also teaches teamwork,” she said.
Leeds also talked about the intrinsic value of mock trial.
“The impact of the mock trial program, and maybe some takeaways, is that mock trial doesn't just teach how our laws work and how court procedure is done, which is really important, but it really does create leaders and engage citizens, and I can't think of anything better than that. A lot of people assume that because it's mock trial that most of the students go on to practice law, and that's not the case. A very small amount of our students go on to practice law, but they've all said that if they go on to college, it's given them a lot of tools that they need to be successful,” Leeds said.
Winning their way to the National Mock Trial Championship in Iowa also gave the participating students in Animus another advantage. I asked Jarvis before the trip to Iowa how it felt to travel.
“We've never done something like this,” Jarvis said.
I asked her if she had ever traveled so far away.
“The furthest I've traveled is Florida, but I drove. I've never flown,” she said.
The students were given their national mock trial topic at the beginning of April and had only until May 7th to get ready. So the students got to work.
Wagley told me that Animas High School won two of the four rounds and split the judges' ballots on one of two losses. She said there were over 800 students competing nationally in Des Moines, but despite that stiff competition, Perla Cuevas, received one of the 10 trophies given out to the students who performed as witnesses.
