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OJEN turned 15 this year! We’re celebrating: 15 years of justice education programs province-wide; 15 years of free classroom resources for high school teachers; 15 years of meaningful volunteer opportunities for legal professionals; 15 years of preparing young people to become legally capable Canadian citizens! Since 2002, our programs and resources have impacted the lives […]
Read more“Reconciliation to me, means that we walk together on a path.” These were the words, spoken by an elder in Rat Portage First Nation, that have remained with me throughout my work in northwestern Ontario. I visited Rat Portage for an Elders Forum put on by a small grassroots initiative called Reconciliation Kenora. The words […]
The classroom was like any classroom. The desks had chairs attached. There were a couple of loose papers on the floor. Stacks of paper on the teacher’s desk. The students were quiet at the beginning but it quickly turned into chaos, that beautiful kind of chaos, where true learning happens. The students had moved the […]
Having worked with a few different youth groups, facilitating public legal education (PLE) workshops and presentations, one thing is quite evident: youth are eager to learn about the justice system and how they fit into it. “Where do I learn what my rights are?” Variations of this question are always asked by our youth, regardless […]
Volunteering with the Ontario Justice Education Network (OJEN), I recently began facilitating a family law mock trial at the Afghan Women’s Organization for newcomer youth. Its aims are to give Afghan youth the opportunity to work with lawyers involved in the justice system, and to develop their analytic thinking skills. As a first year law […]
It is not often that elementary classrooms are considered hot spots for justice education. Justice education is typically believed to be a topic reserved for older students, who are at least high school aged. At the Ontario Justice Education Network (OJEN), we have made a concerted effort to change this ideology, by targeting elementary students […]
Often, justice sector volunteers (including but not limited to law students, lawyers and judges) come to their first OJEN program excited to bestow their knowledge about the Canadian legal system upon interested youth. Seldom do they approach their initial program thinking it will be an opportunity for professional development, beyond the law based preparation required. […]
Last year, Marie Reyes gave birth to a beautiful daughter, Selene. But just hours after her birth, Selene was taken away and placed in the care of Marie’s sister, thousands of kilometres away. Why? Because Marie is in prison for assault, a crime of violence. There is a program in Canadian federal prisons that allows […]
I met Ted Herbert a little over a year ago after he contacted our office with an unexpected proposal. The Herbert family had lost their son, Tate, to cancer in 2013. At the time he was just 20 years old, a first year university student, an exuberant, engaged youth on the path to adulthood. Through […]
As a pre-service teacher in the Greater Toronto Area I have spent countless hours in classrooms both teaching and observing over the better part of the last few years. Although I appreciate the value of textbooks to support learning, I feel that learning about the Canadian government as an 11 year old 5th grader would […]
When you start looking at the world through the eyes of a public legal educator, you start to see misinformation and misunderstanding everywhere. Sometimes you’re out running a PLE program and a participant starts talking about a legal issue where they have the basic facts of the law completely wrong. Sometimes you’re browsing your Facebook […]