Nineteen years ago, Aurora Public Schools called me in a panic. Middle school girls were doing something brand new and unheard of: texting inappropriate pictures on their flip phones (the kind only the rich kids had back then). The all-male admin team didn’t want to stand up in front of the girls to talk about it, so they looked at me—the female lawyer with a sixth grader at home—and asked if I’d do it.
So I did. And it was delightful. We talked honestly about this strange new thing called “sexting.” Two weeks later, another school asked me if I would come talk to students about cyberbullying. A month later, another called when a student’s innocent Facebook post had drawn a predator to town. And just like that, student digital citizenship sessions—what we came to call “DigCit”—were born.
From the very beginning, three issues came up again and again: bullying, sexting, and internet safety. And for the next nineteen years, those three issues have never left the stage.
The Numbers That Make My Head Spin
I tried to do some estimating the morning after my last student DigCit presentation. In the last 19 years, I think I’ve done between 1,000 and 1,300 total DigCit presentations, scattered across the five states in which I am now licensed to practice law. Let’s say I averaged 100 students per session - which is really pretty low, since I think the groups were usually at least double that. Multiply that out and we’re looking at more than 100,000 students.
That is a shocking number. One hundred thousand Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas and Wyoming kids who sat in a gym or cafeteria or auditorium while I told stories, asked questions, and tried to convince them that maybe, just maybe, they shouldn’t ruin their lives with one stupid moment on a cell phone.
Why It Mattered
Here’s the thing: doing DigCit made me a better lawyer in so, so many ways.
In this job, it's all too easy to forget that we’re doing this for kids. Being in school buildings two or three times a week let me actually see the kids I serve. It pushed me to grapple with complex legal issues—the First and Fourth Amendments, questions of intent, and harassment law and then boil that down so a seventh grader could understand it. It made me understand the law in ways that law school never did.
And the students—oh, the students! Kids never failed to surprise and (mostly) delight me. They asked smart, probing, sometimes painfully honest questions. They gave me accurate, funny and insightful answers to the questions I asked in return. They shared unfiltered, raw and heartbreaking stories. I am so grateful for those experiences, and I will never forget those amazing kids.
DigCit was also my first foray into what I now call “preventative lawyering.” The firm I worked at when I started doing DigCit was perplexed: why would a lawyer talk to students, other than on career day? But walking into schools gave me the courage to see and then build other things that school clients needed—our policy service, webinar trainings, the administrator evaluation platform, and so much else.
The Chaos I Loved
Being in so many schools so frequently also reminded me of the chaos educators swim in every day. One minute I’d be carefully navigating the kindergarten lunch line, and the next I’d be stepping over third graders reading while sprawled in the hallway, only to be escorted past high school biology kids who were totally absorbed in their lesson.
I’d see administrators juggling it all: stopping mid-conversation to take a call about a discipline issue, or wrangling a bus schedule for a kid who needed to get to practice. It was messy, loud, human, and deeply real. And I got to be part of it.
The Community
I always loved the community aspect of DigCit. When I visited a school, I made sure to wear its colors, learn the mascot, and tease the rivalry with whoever they were playing next. Sometimes I’d get a bonus of eating pork chops at the VFW Club before doing an evening parent session. I always made a point of stopping for gas on the way out of town - to give a little back to a community that had paid to bring me out to talk to their students.
All of this gave me a window into how deeply schools are woven into their towns. Schools aren’t just places where kids learn; they are the heartbeat of their communities.
The Road Warrior Years
Doing over a thousand DigCit adds up to a lot of miles. I’ve slipped out of the driveway at 4:00 a.m., headlights cutting through the dark; I’ve pulled back in after midnight, too tired to even turn off the radio. I’ve stolen ten-minute naps on gravel roads before walking into a gym buzzing with seventh graders.
Those drives were sometimes long and lonely, but they also gave me something precious: time. Time to turn over what had worked, rethink what hadn’t, and dream up ways to make the next session sharper than the last.
Closing This Chapter
Now it’s time to hand the DigCit baton to my KSB colleagues. They are carrying it forward with the grit and heart this work requires. My role now is to be present where I’m most needed—mentoring the next generation of KSB attorneys and standing with schools through challenges that don’t pause while I’m silencing my phone for a day of student sessions.
But here’s the takeaway: I’m so grateful. Grateful for the administrators who trusted me. Grateful for the students who challenged me. Grateful for the way this work kept me honest about why I became a school lawyer in the first place. I’ll never forget that when we opened KSB School Law a decade ago, the first check we received came from Wahoo Public Schools—for DigCit presentations. From day one, and for as long as I’m in this work, it has been—and will remain—about doing our best for kids.
One hundred thousand kids. One tired lawyer. And nineteen years of stories I’ll carry forever.