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.