What I have done this semester with my project… Well, I don’t know exactly how much I’ve done for others, but I’ve definitely learned a lot myself. I started out talking to the older and younger kids individually about violence but eventually combined them and started inviting adults in out church, as well.

I wanted to get everyone tickets to the Angola Rodeo, but when that fell through I decided to present a slide show to the kids about what happens if you are convicted of doing violent things. The slide show included pictures of Angola Prison and the discussion that followed the presentation was about what sort of things you have to do to get into prison, what can happen to you while you’re there, what can happen to your family and friends while you’re there (they can slowly disappear). We also discussed the death penalty and I learned that the older kids can actually aid the younger kids in terms of understanding what’s going on in a classroom.

Another day we drew anti-violence posters and made five copies. The kids took them home with instructions to give them to five people outside of their immediate family and to tell them what they learned in Sunday School. We spent a lot of time talking about people in our families who’ve been hurt physically by others. We talked about parental spankings as acts of love versus beating someone up (this was an issue that one of the younger, more challenging students brought up).

Another day we let Brandon talk. Brandon is the guy this project is based on. He was shot in the right side of his chest while trying to break up a fight in his neighborhood. He talked a lot about what had happened to him (a lot of the adults joined us for this and Brandon was happy because he could tell everyone what happened at the same time). He also urged the kids to leave a fight and to call the police instead of getting in the middle of something they shouldn’t be a part of. He explained that he doesn’t feel heroic for what he did; he feels stupid because he could have been killed. He discussed a lot about the pain of a gunshot wound and how even though the wound didn’t kill him, he could have easily died in the hospital of pneumonia or even a common cold because the wound depleted his immune system and left him completely exhausted.

Another day I went to meet with Dan. Dan is the husband of someone my mother works with and he agreed to let me interview him. I learned a lot from him, although I didn’t really agree with a lot that we talked about. I then took that information to my class and held a debate on different issues. Some of the younger kids participated with the adults, which I was surprised by because they’ve already formed their own opinions on things, although I’m sure it’s mostly governed by their parents’ ideas.
I chose the following picture because it’s pretty much self explanatory about my project. The different types of guns represent and make up America, and they’re bleeding into the Gulf and oceans. Blood Shed.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 12:26 am and is filed under Week 13: Accomplishments/pics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.