Prosecutors look at the world through a particular lens: there's a right way to do things, and a wrong way to do things. If you do things the wrong way, and in the process you commit a crime, you need to be held accountable. I was a federal prosecutor for thirteen years, and that's how I looked at the world, too.
As I grew older, however, as I had children and met more people and made many mistakes of my own, the right/wrong calculus I had processed for so many years seemed less satisfying. It didn't leave much room for nuance or -- at least the way I did things -- for redemption. I started paying more attention to the way my defendants looked and, even more, to the way their families looked as they sat in court watching and listening to the sad business of criminal justice.
As I said, having children played a role in my devolution as a prosecutor. I learned that everyone starts out innocent, and that part of everyone stays innocent despite particular malefactions. Part of our American innocence comes from the infinite hope that our Constitution and our Bill of Rights offer. I deeply believe in the promise of the Bill of Rights. And from the time they were very young, I taught my children about their fundamental constitutional rights. Fundamental rights were something they could own when they had very little power or authority to own anything else.
I believe this knowledge empowered my children, and gave them a stake in their personal and collective futures. So, I started teaching these same concepts in more formal settings. I became an adjunct professor at a law school, and often taught street law clinics in local high schools. The high school students I met were astonishing; they wanted to know everything I could tell them, and they had an infinite variety of questions and concerns. The more I taught, the more convinced I became that when high school kids know their rights, when they understand what inalienably belongs to and empowers them, they hope and dream on a bigger scale. That's when I decided to become a high school teacher. This blog is about my learning to be one.
