Teaching: Sticking to One's Pedagogical Goals

So while I am in Augsburg I will be teaching an 8-hour course, in English, to law students. The goal is to prepare them, as much as possible, to study law in the U.S.

There are four two-hour sessions, running over the course of two weeks. Of course this is not enough time to teach them everything I feel like they should know. I'm doing my best to resist the temptation to cram too much into 8 hours, but it's difficult.

Class #1 will focus on legal English, and will introduce the idea of case law. They will likely not understand why they have to read so many cases. I hope to explain that to them in a way that makes sense. The availability of Black's Law Dictionary in the Westlaw database is very helpful. The first thing we will practice together is looking up definitions, and then figuring out what they mean. I'm starting the defining with the term "standing," which obviously means something different in regular English than it does in legal English. The main topic of the case law discussion will be the idea of precedent. Because I am a criminal procedure junkie, I will be using a Fourth Amendment Supreme Court case to analyze that concept.

In class #2, we will talk about the legal education system in the United States, which will lead us directly into learning about the Socratic method and briefing cases so that they are prepared to answer questions during lectures. Again, this will be a new concept for German law students, since lectures in German law schools are the professor talking, the students listening (or not), and no assigned reading. Briefing cases is the first thing you learn how to do in U.S. law school, so I want to make sure they are prepared to do that going in.

Class #3 will focus on the Constitution. After briefly explaining how the document shapes the three branches of the U.S. government, we will focus on the Bill of Rights and other amendments that guarantee individual rights. I prefer this aspect of constitutional law to the federal structure aspect. Since I am the teacher, I get to decide. :-)

I am most of the way done with preparing the final lecture, in which we will discuss statutes. My focus here will be on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which has the bonus benefit of overturning a (bad, in my view) Supreme Court opinion. I will also point out the difference between the annotated and the unannotated code, and explain why the latter is so useful in statutory research and analysis.

My biggest hangup right now is that, aside from Black's Law Dictionary and newspaper articles, I'm not talking much about secondary sources like law review articles. I feel like I'm going to shortchange them if I don't talk about them. But I just don't have enough time. Regular American law students need to know a lot more about cases and statutes than they do about law review articles. But secondary sources are gold when you're researching American law. I have to be okay with the intent and main pedagogical goal of the class, which is to get these students as ready as I can to go to the United States. I can't worry that I'm not covering absolutely everything. Right?

My other worry, of course, is that I'm giving them too much information and too much homework. I hope these kids are ready for some serious hard work!

Stop #1: Augsburg

Here is a brief explanation about the first place I will be this summer...

The first stop is Augsburg, where I will be teaching a class and working in the library of the Juristische Fakultaet at the University of Augsburg.

As a law student, I studied for an entire semester at the University of Augsburg. I have a lot of friends in that city, and am very excited to go back there after 5 years away.

Augsburg is about an hour west of Munich. During my time in Augsburg, I will be teaching a one-day course in the Westlaw electronic database at the Bavarian state library school in Munich.

However, of course the main focus of my time in Augsburg will be on the work I am doing at the university. I will be teaching an 8-hour course for German law students and student research assistants on the American legal system and the basics of American legal research. This class will be in English. I will also give a separate Westlaw training to librarians and others.

All of my Westlaw training sessions will be held in German. My German is a little rusty, and it has been a bit of a struggle to come up with training materials that explain how to use Westlaw in a foreign language. But everything is coming together, and I'm excited about the prospect.

For all of the courses that I'm teaching, I am trying to find interesting cases and topics of discussion. One of my favorite cases is Brown v. Board of Education. I really see that case as a triumph of our legal system over centuries of bigotry and injustice, and I'm proud that our legal system could produce a case like it. It's also relatively short, and the language is not too complicated. I've decided to work it into both my English-language and German-language materials. I hope it leads to some good discussions about how a legal system can evolve to right wrongs, and work toward ensuring justice for the marginalized.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! This will be an online diary of my adventures this summer...

The short version: I am an American law librarian. I am taking a two-month leave of absence from my job at a law school library in California, and spend that time teaching, working, and learning at three law libraries in the German state of Bavaria.

I will explain how all of this came about in upcoming posts. But for now suffice it to say...8 days and counting until I am Germany-bound. :-)