Law-Related Education Projects: State Update your project's information Pennsylvania LEAP -- Kids (Law, Education, and Peace for Kids, Inc.) Contact:  David Keller Trevaskis, Executive Director Address: P.O. Box 428               6 Royal Avenue, Glenside, PA 19038-0428 Tel: 215-885-1610                                            Fax: 215-885-1036 E-mail: david@leap-kids.com Website: www.leap-kids.com Program Highlights Project PEACE (Peaceful Endings through Attorneys, Children and Educators), a peer mediation and conflict resolution education training program supported statewide by Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher and the Pennsylvania Bar Association (PBA). Project PEACE was originally created in 1993 by LEAP-Kids founder David Keller Trevaskis for then Indiana Attorney General Pam Carter and the Indiana State Bar Association. Today in Indiana, with formal Indiana Department of Education backing supporting the orginal partners, more than 300 schools have been trained by Project PEACE. Pennsylvania, which picked up the program in 1999, now has nearly 80 Project PEACE schools. Project PEACE will be part of the Youth for Justice Best Practices initiative in 2001-2002. Please check the PBA website at www.pabar.org for more details. Project Outreach, the ABA's high school level mediation initiative continues in Pennsylvania under LEAP-Kids at Philadelphia's Lincoln High School. Lawyers train mediators at the neighborhood public high school and help the school implement its prgram. Constitution Signing Day, kicking off each year on September 17th, is a joint program of the PBA, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and LEAP-Kids. LEAP-Kids develops a booklet of lessons that is distributed by the PBA and available on its website to all schools interested in celebrating the United States Constitution. Law Day, the annual national celebration of the rule of law held each May 1st, finds LEAP-Kids again partnering with the PBA to bring lessons created by LEAP-Kids and its partners into the hands of attorneys and educators around themes of justice. This year's theme is Symbols of Justice and involves a poster contest that will be held throughout the fall semester in 2001 with winners being announced during Law Day 2002. Past booklets of lessons are available online at the PBA website. The PBA and LEAP-Kids encourages lawyers and judges to visit classrooms all year long, but especially around Law Day, to make these lessons come alive in the classroom. The Federal Courts Program partners LEAP-Kids with the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals for a program that has federal judges and attorneys working with selected schools and educators. Classes visit the federal courts, conduct mock appellate arguments and interact with law and justice professionals from the federal courts to gain a abettre understanding of how these courts work and how they differ from the state system. Medical Mock Trial Program -- Medical and Dental students from Pennsylvania schools have joined their counterpart law students to work with professionals in their fields to create and conduct medical mock trials held before actual judges in real courtrooms. Past mock trials have involved wrongful death, failure to treat a patient with AIDS, the denial of insurance coverage, and informed consent. Mock trial competition -- LEAP-Kids works with the PBA to promote, organize and run the Pennsylvania Statewide Mock Trial Competition which begins in late fall and runs through April each year. More than 250 schools across the Commonwealth participated in the 2001 program, the 21st year a mock trial competition was held in Pennsylvania. Scripted Mock Trial Competition -- Students of all ages are encouraged to create their own original mock trials in this competition using an instructional framework that is at the heart of the Justice Education’s Teaching Strategies (JETS) booklets produced by JETS) booklets produced for grades K-4 in cooperation with LEAP-Kids by noted Pennsylvania educator Anne Spector. Teen court -- LEAP-Kids is working with Teen Courts in Philadelphia and elsewhere across Pennsylvania providing training and technical assistance, primarily at schools that wish to establish in-house sentencing programs as an alternative form of discipline. Teens, Crime and the Community -- program by Street Law, works for youth handgun violence reduction with YES (Youth Educators for Safety) Program. Other TCC projects involve peer mediation programs, Teen Courts, student council outreach and work to end bullying." We Can Work it Out: Mediation Showcase -- Street Law program. LEAP-Kids has ongoing mediation showcases planned in North Allegheny, Hazleton, East Penn and Abington School Districts for 2001-2002 with a community program at the Beaver County YMCA planned for the fall of 2001 to kick off that organization's newest building. Scores of classroom mediation showcases will occur as a result of LEAP-Kids training. Product Highlights N/A LRE Projects Home | State LRE Projects Home | State Project Profiles Multiple Projects | Common Programs & Products | Project Survey Summary National LRE Projects Home | Contact Information | Youth for Justice Program