A Lesson in Civic Duty

In August I received a summons for jury duty for the month of October. I have never been called before. I got a big envelope in the mail that included a questionnaire and instructions. Serving on a jury in my opinion is a civic responsibility. I have however been unpleasantly surprised by how many people have given me advice about how to get out of it. Their ideas would certainly work. If I could not be impartial due to something in the past or if I had a strong prejudice about people doing this particular crime, I'd be dismissed. Certainly we don't want people on juries that don't want to be there. If I ever was needing a jury to decide my fate or those of a loved one, I would hope that a jury of sympathetic, smart and unbiased individuals would think that they had a civic duty too.

Of course there is never a great time to have a disruption of this kind in your life. I have been busily doing MAP testing with our students for the past 2 weeks. There is a testing window that closes for us this upcoming Friday. The students at one of my schools will not have seen me for 3 weeks. It is still the beginning of the school year for me since I had very few classes with them prior to starting MAP. Writing substitute plans is not something that is up there on my list of fun things to do.

I don't know whether I will actually get chosen for a jury. I have never even been to court. If I do get chosen I will be listening carefully and I am going to look on it as a new experience. We teach our students the importance of community and citizenship. At the very least it will be an interesting experience. This will be a way for me to put in action a lesson of citizenship.