Buffalo teacher attends Supreme Court Institute

Crump, who grew up in a South Bronx housing project, decided he wanted to empower young people of color to pursue education as a path to success.

In 2021, he completed the University at Buffalo Teacher Residency Program, an accelerated certification that places student teachers in Buffalo Public School classrooms for a full school year to lead their own classes in the city for at least three years.

That’s how Crump found himself in the chambers of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., observing the nation’s highest court — not as a lawyer, but as a teacher.

Crump, who has taught social studies at the Frederick Law Olmsted School in Buffalo since completing the UB program, won a spot in the 2024 Supreme Court Summer Institute hosted by Street Law and the Supreme Court Historical Society.

The six-day program gives social studies teachers experience, strategies and content “to expand how they teach the United States Supreme Court and its cases,” according to the Street Law website.

Crump was one of 60 teachers selected for the institute at a time when the Supreme Court is making news and history and raising questions about judicial ethics, political bias and the future of reproductive and LGBTQ rights .

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Crump said.

He discovered the institute while teaching a high school law class using programs on government, civics and law offered by Street Law, a nonprofit organization focused on community empowerment marginalized by education.

He flew to Washington on June 12 and spent the week observing and picking the brains of Supreme Court experts with 29 other teachers from around the country. Thirty other teachers were there the following week. The only other teacher in New York told Crump that she applied three times before finally being admitted.

The first evening, they had an orientation dinner at the Jones Day law firm headquarters in Washington, whose roof overlooks the Capitol.

The next day, they experienced the high level of security (armed guards, electronic devices, two metal detectors and magic wand) and complete silence required in the Supreme Court chambers.

“Five minutes before the judges come in, they tell everyone to be quiet,” Crump said. “Someone kept coughing and was asked to leave.”

Crump said the chamber was filled with attorneys who argued in court and resulted in three rulings that day. Justice Brett Kavanaugh read the court’s decision upholding access to mifepristone, a medical abortion pill, which he wrote.

Then Justice Clarence Thomas read two rulings he had written, one that said Donald Trump’s name could not be placed on an anti-Trump T-shirt and the other a ruling that could allow employers (in this case, Starbucks) to lay off employees more easily. trying to organize unions.

Crump’s cohort was able to interview CNN Supreme Court reporter Kimberly Robinson and attorney David Casazza, a former law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, who provided “insider information” such as the tradition that the youngest justice, currently Ketanji Brown Jackson, is assigned the task of ordering lunch for the court.

They also met with Chief Justice John Roberts’ lawyer, Robert Dow, and toured an exhibit on school desegregation highlighting the “Little Rock Nine,” black students who integrated Little Rock schools into the Arkansas in 1957.

Crump had taught the subject to his eighth-grade students using a book called “Little Rock Girls,” he said. “I was really moved by that.”

He even got to play the role of a judge in a mock trial at the Georgetown University Law Center using the case O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier 2022, which ruled that school board members who blocked citizens from accessing the board’s social media had violated their First Amendment rights.

According to Crump, he is the first BPS teacher to attend the institute and he plans to share what he has learned.

He said this experience would elevate his teaching about the judicial branch of the U.S. government to a higher level, and he was asked to lead professional development sessions at the Supreme Court for his fellow teachers in the fall.

He also hopes to form a mock trial or mock trial team at the college level to interest students in law as practitioners, not offenders, from a young age.

“This was a phenomenal, life-changing experience for me, and I have no intention of letting this opportunity go cold,” he said. “I want to use this experience to move things forward on behalf of my students.”

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The Buffalo Next team gives you insight into the region’s economic revitalization. Email tips to [email protected] or contact Buffalo Next editor David Robinson at 716-849-4435.