Law & Public Safety in the Frontier State

Teena Calkin Goes it Alone in Alaska

King Tech High School is a Vocational/Technical school that for the first time this year also has approximately 200 full-time students. Our full-time students begin at 7:30AM in class, all students have one of two Career & Technical Education classes that are 2-hour time blocks and full-time students have a 5th period 1 hour class that ends their day at 2:30pm.  Additionally, we have strong Career Technical Student Organizations through SkillsUSA, HOSA and Educators Rising.  In the 7 years our school has been competing, we have made it to nationals every year in various categories and have won various medals at nationals. 

As part of the class, we cover 13 of 14 chapters and have approximately 10 guest speakers.  Our capstone project is setting up interactive crime scenes with other classes at the school, dispatching my students in predetermined teams to investigate. They have to secure, diagram, photograph, collect evidence and interview subjects to solve the crime.  They get 10 hours (5 days) to complete the investigation and another 10 to complete reports and put together case files.  We combine both class sessions and go to court where students present their crime scene investigations to a Superior Court Judge, Prosecutor and Public Defender.  This helps them connect the dots on why certain things are important, the importance of professionalism and ethics and exposes them to the formal public speaking and writing formats of the courts. Students also participate in 3 other field trips, one to our local female correctional facility where they get to talk with inmates in a treatment program and trips to our Airport Police & Fire department (one of the few left in the country that are combined) and TSA which recruits directly from our class.  We also participate in emergency management projects such as developing our own emergency shelter and figuring out how to keep it running for a minimum of 2 weeks – the time it will take to get help to our state during a major disaster.  Great for critical thinking.  Students are required to wear uniform shirts every Tuesday and Thursday and professionally dress on Wednesdays.  This represents the 3 components of the system.