THE DEBATE ON GUN CONTROL: November 2013

Friday, November 29, 2013

Trevor's Reflection of the project

My Thoughts on the Guest Speaker

by Trevor Harwood

When the guest speaker came in the other day to talk about his opinions on gun control, the whole process came together. First the anticipation of him coming was a challenge. We had contacted him to come but did not hear from him that day. I was very nervous that he was not going to come and we were going to get stuck with no presentation. When he arrived at 1220, I was so relieved. He was a very good speaker and I think that all of the students including myself learned something new about the debate on gun control. Something that I would change in this presentation is to give the students more time to fill out their questions for the police officer. The students only had at most ten minutes at the beginning to fill out some question. An idea to make sure more time is granted is to send the paper home with the students for homework to bring in the next day. This way the students have the entire night to think about questions that they wanted to ask. Another way to allow more time for questions is to do a quick lesson the day before and have them fill out the handout so that they are ready for the next day. This is just one thing that I would change in our presentation.

The pace of the speaker went extremely well. He was able to give a brief introduction and then answer student’s questions to his best ability. He spoke for about twenty minutes but the time never seemed to be boring. Captain Riggs had a lot of good ideas and it seemed like the students were engaged the whole time. This is exactly what a teacher wants in a guest speaker presentation. Another aspect that went well was the discussion at the end. Although, it was started impromptu, I thought a lot of good ideas came out of it. Students had many opinions and wanted to talk to the class about the issues. They wanted to know what laws changes needed to be made to decrease the chance of a mass shooting. This is exactly what I wanted as a teacher because it promotes curiosity. Students will hopefully go back home and research what they wanted to know about gun control/safety and form an opinion on the current event.

Through this process, I learned that having a guest speaker in your classroom is a hard thing to do. As the teacher you must meet with the speaker beforehand so there is n confusion on topic or date of presentation. I wish we had sat down with Captain Riggs before hand to talk about how we wanted the presentation to go so that he was aware of the process. I learned that there are many different views on gun control and that even Captain Riggs of the Salem State Police does not know the answer to the problem. I learned that time is crucial to student involvement in the lesson because then they will have time to really get comfortable and engaged. The students in this classroom were very respectful to the guest speaker which was beneficial to the pace of the presentation. Lastly, I learned that when a teacher has a guest speaker, the teacher should send a thank you note and buy the person a little gift to show your appreciation. This may sound simple but it goes a long way in showing our appreciation. Overall, I felt really good about how this presentation went.

Overall Current Event Reflection

This current event project was helpful in making me more aware of the issues that go along with gun control. One of the great things about this project was that it was a group project. I liked working with Lauren and Jessica because I was able to get other perspectives on the debate with their interviews and take actions. I was able to research this topic numerous times and with a growing number of these cases it is becoming a prominent issue in the United States. I think that I am more interested in the news because of this project. Gun control will always be an issue and I think that knowing what I know now, I will be better educated when it comes to the news. Before this project I did not know what the laws were and what the debate of gun control was about. I thought it was just should we have guns or not, but I was completely uninformed. Now that I have worked on this topic this semester I will be able to form an opinion on the issue and debate with others. I think that I am on my way to becoming an Active Citizen but I have a ways to go. This is because I am only educated on one issue and there are a lot more topics that I must become aware of to be an active citizen. This current event project made me from a citizen who just focuses on sports news to someone who is becoming more aware of the world around him.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Jessica's Take Action

Jessica's Ideas
The debate on Gun Control is very important to me. There are far too many people are being killed. When I first began to think about gun laws I was very confused. I knew Gun Control was something that was very important to me, but I questioned myself, "how could a small town girl make an impact on Gun Control?"
At my University I serve as a Senator on Student Govenment Association (SGA). In the last few years when Gun Control became an important topic in the country, after more and more mass shootings were occuring, SGA decided to make sure the voices of our campus community would be heard. The organization as a whole was unable to take a stand on this issues because we have to remain neutral. As a organization we decided to have postcards where members of the University would be able to write to their elected officals about why there should be Gun Control Laws or why not? On certain days I would sit at a table in different areas of campus and encourage students to write a postcard. By encouraging students in the campus community to write postcards it showed me the importance of how one person may not be able to make a difference, but when we come to together to take a stand it makes all the difference in the world.
As time passes and there are still issues occring in the country as a result of gun violence I think it would be a great idea to bring this idea of having students write postcards to elected officals. In doing this it shows that gun violence is a topic that is very important.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Trevor's Take Action

Trevor's Ideas on Taking Action

November 5,2013 When I first thought about how I would take action on this topic, I was overwhelmed. Here I was a student in college and had to educate many people on why gun control should be enforced. I started to research ways that I could take action and here's what I came up with. The first move I could make is right a letter that is persuading the local or federal government. In the letter I could tell them why I think that the gun control laws need to be more strict. After writing the letter I could send it to the Senator or another important official to speak my mind on the subject. This is something that might not help educate people about the issue but the letter could present the officials with some evidence to why they want to go one way on the issue. Another way that I could take action is through a petition. Now we hear about petitions all the time for things but many petitions do not exactly work out. I think that a petition would work in this case to send in with a letter t the senator and raise awareness to the people signing it on how the gun control laws should be. Another way that I could take action is going to local officials and planning an event that is scheduled. on this day, people could take action and raise awareness through guest speakers and handouts. It would be called National Gun Control Day. The last idea that I came up with in order to take action on gun control during my research was joining the Brady campaign to prevent gun violence. This group was founded by people who were directly effected by gun violence. On their website you can sign a petition and get information about gun violence and how to minimize it. These are just a couple of ideas on how to take action when it comes to Gun Control.
For my take action that I actually did I signed the petition on the Brady Campaign website which is http://www.bradycampaign.org/?q=take-action. It felt good to finally take a stand on what I believed in and make a difference in society. I have always been for strict gun control because I believe that violence with guns is happening more and more and I want it to be limited. It made me feel proud to sign the petition because I was part of a group that believed in strict gun control laws.
Social Justice is a controversial topic to be taught in school. I believe that social justice can be taught in school if the proper best practices are used. I think that there are some touchy issues that should not be covered but as you move up in grade the students should be presented with more pressing issues. I also believe that in order to teach social justice students need to be mature to learn it and I think that fifth grade may be a good introductory start. This quote:…“Concerns about the common good and the rights of the individual, no matter how humble in social standing, transcends politics and holds a definitive place in the realms of morality, ethics and federal law, and therefore in the world of teaching social studies”. I think that this is true to a point. Students need to learn social justice to be a well informed citizen and this should be taught in Social Studies. Like I was saying before, the age of the children need to be mature to start teaching about certain topics but if we want a society that is educated on the topics we need to inform children earlier in their life. I think that there are so many people that grow up and are not educated on what's happening in the world. This is not good because people who are not educated on social justice are not informed citizens. As much as social justice is controversial, it is important that teachers instruct their students about the issues so they are better informed.