Mock CSI exercise tests student deduction skills

By Elle Curtis

This past week, Windham High School students participated in the annual Mock CSI exercise and this time it was on the Saint Joseph’s College campus. Students focused on detective and evidence tech work with a combination of curriculum skills and life skills taught through engaging mystery solving.

Windham High School students gathered to participate in an
annual Mock CSI exercise on the Saint Joseph's College
campus on May 2. In the exercise, students focused on
detective skills and life skills taught through engaging
mystery solving. PHOTO BY GARY HARRIMAN  

On May 2, WHS students, alongside Saint Joseph’s Criminology Department, worked together to determine the suspect of a hit and run scenario. Saint Joseph’s Criminology Department helped set up and run the scenario, with many students serving as actors in the CSI exercise.

Students from Windham High School’s APEX English classes taught by Adrianne Shetenhelm, and Tess Hall’s English classes, primarily focused on interviewing suspects and writing reports, while students from Lauren Ruffner’s Honors Chemistry class, and John Ziegler’s Honors Pre-Calculus classes, viewed the case from a different perspective, primarily focusing on analyzing blood samples and calculating a suspect’s speed from skid marks.

“The CSI project is great because it teaches students a combination of curriculum skills and life skills,” said WHS teacher John Ziegler, a coordinator of the event.

“Speaking from a Pre-Calculus perspective, my students apply their knowledge of the law of sines and the law of cosines in order to do cell tower triangulation, and they apply their knowledge of equation solving to calculate speed from skid marks,” he said. “However, it's the life skills that make the unit great. Students learn how to communicate effectively, organize information, and draw conclusions from evidence, which are all skills that will benefit them not only if they decide to go into a law enforcement career, but also in most other careers they might opt to pursue.”

In addition to showing students how the skills they learn in class can be applied in a real-life scenarios, the mock CSI exercise aimed to weave subject areas together in an interdisciplinary fashion. Whereas coordinators used to separate the content areas, now content areas are mixed together, which goes toward creating a more worthwhile experience for everyone.

Their critical thinking skills were challenged as groups crafted their theories through debating and discussing amongst themselves to try to find out who the killer was with evidence including suspect alibis and locations gleaned from cellphone tower data.

“Being able to take disparate pieces of evidence and weave them into a compelling narrative to advance your argument is a skill that students will be asked to use many times in life, and this exercise is a chance for them to begin practicing that skill,” Ziegler said. “That's not to say it's easy. At the beginning of the CSI day, I saw many students making mistakes in how they were questioning witnesses. However, the more they did it, the better they got at it. Critical thinking skills are almost like a muscle.”

This year was the first time a narrative was re-used from a Mock CSI scenario from previous years. The previous one was first used in 2019, however, this year it was updated to better create a sense of community among students so that no one felt left out of any part of the scenario.

Ziegler said the Mock CSI Exercise strives to inspire students, as well as turn them into creative and practical problem solvers that will continue to flourish, even outside of the classroom. <