Alabama Center for Law & Civic Education Contact: Wade Black, Associate Director Alabama Center for Law & Civic Education Cumberland School of Law Birmingham AL 35229 E-mail: wadeblack@mindspring.com This program was a winner of the 2001 Law Day Activity Awards Play By the Rules: Alabama Laws for Youth Activity Summary: Play By the Rules is a program to teach Alabama law to young people, to develop civic understanding and a sense of civic responsibility. The centerpiece of Play By the Rules is a 72-page manual of Alabama law in question-and-answer form distributed annually to every seventh grader in Alabama on or around Law Day, May 1—for free. When work began on Play By the Rules, the Center expected it would find models in other states it could imitate or modify. Instead, when it found no such models, it became a national model itself, receiving praise from as far away as New Jersey, Alaska, and California, from teachers, attorneys, legislators, school resource officers, LRE state coordinators, and national centers of civics and citizenship education. Publication of Play By the Rules is a joint project of the Alabama Center for Law & Civic Education, the Alabama State Department of Education, the Alabama Department of Youth Services, and the Alabama Attorney General’s Office. The student handbook is intended for use statewide by middle school students in public, private, and home schools, by incarcerated youth in the juvenile system, and by youth in community settings such as scouting or church youth groups. The content is balanced and focuses on the law as it is actually written and enforced, and the curriculum in the teacher’s guide provides multiple opportunities to teach both rights and responsibilities. Just as school handbooks explain what is expected of students at a particular school, Play By the Rules provides Alabama youth with a manual of the norms of society, as they have been enacted into law and to which youth are expected to subscribe. There is a near-universal recognition of the need for such a manual—among parents, among educators, and among youth leaders in the community. Play By the Rules provides Alabama youth with their personal manual of practical law as it affects them. Activity Narrative: Play By the Rules is both a civic education program and the student manual that accompanies it. The student handbook is intended for use statewide by middle school students in public, private, and home schools, by incarcerated youth in the juvenile system, and by youth in community settings such as Scouts or church youth groups. The introduction of young people in Alabama to this manual was assisted by teachers and community resource persons - attorneys, law officers, judges, trained parent volunteers, and other knowledgeable community leaders. Play By the Rules is distributed for school and community use annually on and around Law Day, May 1, after standardized testing has been completed by the schools and before the schools release students for the summer. Use of Play By the Rules within the Department of Youth Services schools will be ongoing, to meet the needs of their year-round schedule and the rollover rate of youth within the DYS system. Use of Play By the Rules by alternative schools, by school resource officers, by community youth leaders, by juvenile probation officers, and by volunteer attorneys and members of the judiciary, as well as use of Play By the Rules in community settings, will be flexibly designed to meet the unique needs of local site requirements. Play By the Rules does not require that teachers and community leaders become experts in the law before using these materials. Implementation of Play By the Rules is accompanied by appropriate teacher manuals and training materials and includes training for teachers and trainers and community resource persons. Play By the Rules training for school teachers began in the spring of 2001. Initial training for DYS personnel, attorney volunteers, law enforcement officers, and juvenile probation officers has also begun. Materials are in development for parent training and for training community volunteers. Play By the Rules develops clearer knowledge of Alabama law, the rights and responsibilities of young people in their community, and the rights and responsibilities of the community in regards to its young citizens. It reaches public, private, and home school children, youth in alternative schools, and youth in community settings. It develops greater understanding of civic virtue and civic responsibility, including a better knowledge of the values and norms of our culture as these are expressed in law, among young people and among the educators, parents, and community volunteers who work with these young people. It also develops a clearer knowledge of the law, of the consequences of breaking the law, and of the benefits of abiding by the law, among youth already involved with the juvenile justice system in Alabama. Finally, it increases positive interaction between young people and the adult community, reduces crime and violence, and develop greater civic participation among Alabama youth. To achieve these goals, Play By the Rules develops and distributes a manual of Alabama law for youth, focused on the law as it is actually enacted and enforced in Alabama, for use by youth in schools, in juvenile justice facilities, and in the community, develops Play By the Rules teaching materials for educators, parents, community volunteers, and youth trainers, provides context-specific and use-appropriate training to educators and youth leaders in a variety of settings, including schools, community organizations, after-school and summer programs, alternative schools, and the juvenile justice system, and provides broad community training in this material, for community adult volunteers and resource professionals: to provide suitable adult role models and opportunities for positive cross-age experiences to the youth of Alabama, to increase knowledge of the law within the general community, to provide a multi-systemic and community-wide “continuum of care” addressing youth already within the juvenile justice system or recently released from the juvenile justice system and at risk of returning to it, and to develop better informed and broadly supported community-wide approaches to the role of young people in the community and to the problems of youth violence, drug use, child safety, child abuse and neglect, and the decline of civic participation. 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