Law and Order: New Scenery Coming for the Law and Justice Academy

Redwood Principal Dr. Gridiron, Law teacher Ms. McFadden, and Mock Trial member Delilah Gomez, ’28, give their views on this exciting news.

By: Fabian Anguiano

Room 30 has been approved by the district to be turned into a courtroom to be used by Redwood’s Mock Trial team and law students for practice in a real courtroom environment on campus.

Now obviously, this is really exciting news for Law Academy students and teachers, and the fact that this was passed by the district shows that voices can be heard. But there is always two sides to everything, as Room 30, which has been used as an AP U.S. History and U.S History classroom, is to be used for the courtroom.

The Redwood Law and Justice academy has been filled with success these last few years, through Mock Trial, but a new pitch that was approved by Redwood Principal Dr. Brandon Gridiron that will change the scenery for the students in the best way possible.

When did Redwood’s current Foundations of Law and Advanced Civil Law teacher, Ms. Jennifer McFadden, first come to Redwood? “I first came to Redwood in 2017, and I started teaching law the following year in 2018.”

“I was hired to teach U.S history, and basically that is what I figured my career would be. I didn’t realize that we had a law academy here, then I got involved with the Mock Trial. The teacher who was working with my Mock Trial, Mr. Pruitt, had also started the law academy, and when he left Redwood, he passed along a lot of his lessons and things to me, and so I was able to start teaching the freshman in 2018, and so that was a lot of fun.”

What inspired Ms. McFadden to pitch her courtroom idea to Dr. Gridiron? “Well, a lot of legal studies programs around the valley have courtrooms for their students. For example, Granite Hills and Porterville have a courtroom that they built for their law academy, Bullard High School in Fresno has a courtroom and Clovis North High School has a classroom that a teacher converted into a courtroom.”

“That was my original plan to convert a classroom into a courtroom, but they spent millions of dollars on their buildings and their projects. I realized we had a space here at Redwood that potentially could be used for that, and it’s in a historic building, so I envisioned kind of a turn-of-the-century style courtroom that our students could use. I’d love to see our academy students have the same experience as our Mock Trial team after school has. Having an authentic environment in which to do our projects and perform our courtroom reanactments and forth,” said Ms. McFadden.

Is there any way this can benefit her as a teacher? “As a teacher, when a student walks into an environment that is more authentic, and they are able to experience it, it changes their performance. They take it more seriously, it becomes a heightened learning experience. So just from that perspective I suppose it benefits me because I like to see my students do well,” said Ms. McFadden.

How does it feel for Ms. McFadden knowing that her voice was heard? “That was good, I actually didn’t expect there to be a lot of reception to the idea, and the fact that it was considered, that felt affirming.”

“I think that our students will really benefit from having a hands-on learning experience, which is what our academies are supposed to do,” said Ms. McFadden.

Redwood Principal, Dr. Brandon Gridiron, who approved this in the first place, shared his first reaction to the pitch by Ms. McFadden, “Well first of all, I thought it was a great idea, I thought it created real-life experience in what they go through every day. That initial response was, what can we do to create a better and more real experience for our students. That’s really what interested me in the opportunity.”

How does Dr. Grididron think this will benefit the academy and the students themselves? “Students will get to actually have a space where they get to create mock trials, no pun intended, in relation to what their experiencing … Students will actually be able to reenact certain cases within their classroom, and they will be able to really have this project based experience where they can put on full trials and they can act as the jurors and as court clerks, and the judges, and the prosecuting attornies and defense attornies, witnesses and so long so forth … it also gives them real life practical examples of what it all looks like.”

What does the process of constructing the courtroom look like? “Well, I think that’s the process that we are going through right now. Although the proposal has been approved by our district office, to kind of move forward with the design, there are a lot of logistical pieces that still have to be laid out, and so idealy we would like to do this right away.”

“But when we’re talking about construction, when we’re talking about design, when we’re talking about what happens with construction, how do we make sure that the lessons that we design are actually able to be done in a way that we are proposing to do them?,” said Dr. Gridiron.

“It’s all the pieces that we’ll be working on next year, so that way, when we go throughout the year we can have a real life example of what this looks like. The goal is by the fall maybe of, ’27 or, ’26, or even later in the year that we can begin to actually put all the vision together and the pieces together. So there is still a lot of things that we have to do, but we’re excited about the possibilities of what could happen,” said Dr. Gridiron.

Does Dr. Gridiron think this can help our future mock trial compete at a higher level? “Absolutely, just creating the atmosphere in which their already going to be competing, it’s going to give them a little leg up over some of the competition because they have this space readily available on this campus, in addition to what it will be able to do in their day-to-day instructional experiences, each day they’re going to be in class and that classroom can then turn into a courtroom which then turns into an experience.”

“I think it will also maybe interest more kids to even be a part of the experience. I think not only will the room and the space be something that we can marvel over in relation to what it looks like, but there is something about the history and nostalgia of Redwood. This building is a historical monument within our city.”

Dr. Gridiron said, “That is probably one of the oldest buildings in our city, and so to be able to create a space that is not only going to replicate history, being that it is a social science class or a history class, but also be able to tell stories around what that history meant for not only Visalia, but our nation as a whole. I think it’s going to create a great opportunity for our students, but it’s also going to be a center piece for our city and our school to be proud of.”

Dr. Gridiron had one last thing to say, “I’m excited about what this opportunity has for our students, and I want to thank our student body and our teachers for being invested in trying to create better experiences for our students and really elevating the tradition of excellence that is Redwood.”

Delilah Gomez, ’28, shared how Mock Trial went for her freshman year, “It went really well. My team, we got third place, we almost got to state. Silver [team] did end up going to state, so it was pretty fun.”

Was there anything the team could have improved on as a whole? “No, not really. Maybe just being more confident, but our team was really good,” said Gomez.

Hows does it feel as a Law student that Gomez can be learning in a court room possibly by junior year? “I think it is going to be really great. It was really fun when we did a scrimmage at Clovis North, and the courtroom will make a big improvement to help the incoming freshman that year.”

How can this help Gomez as a student? “It will help us be more confident in the court room and just get more practice in general.”

Does Gomez think this can elevate the classroom experience? “I think so.”

Gomez had one last thing to say, “Join Mock Trial.”

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