Reflection Blog: Nora Mayral Boyle

Nora Mayral Boyle
Dr. Roddy
Integrated history and Social Sciences
15 May 2020
Reflection Blog: Nora Mayral Boyle
I learned a lot about civic engagement, even though the rise of the coronavirus in our country and area Coronavirus and its subsequent ‘side effects’ restricted our engagement process. My issue was gun violence in schools, and it was exciting to find such an issue that I was passionate about and be able to explore the issue and interview people affected by it. At first I was unsure how my engagement would take place, but then I learned about the Bellaire High School shooting that had occured a little while before. The Bellaire High School shooting gave me an opportunity to reach out to students my age to discuss such issues with people the very that are affected by. In addition, I already knew these people, so our interaction felt more comfortable than I imagined talking to a student I didn’t know would be, as it is a very serious issue. My interviews were both quite successful. I had talked to both my interviewees beforehand to the extent they felt comfortable talking about, so I knew where a question would cross the line. Both my interviewees gave me a lot of information, and helped me form a narrative. Their interviews helped me create my infographic on gun violence in schools, and how it truly affects students, their mental health, and how safe they felt at school as a whole. I feel like I can continue helping this issue by simply voicing my opinion on the matter, and supporting organizations like Everytown, and their sub-organizations, and doing what I can to help the  mission. I truly believe that civic engagement is very important  on both local and statewide and national levels,  as  well  as beyond. People should be able and  feel comfortable sharing their opinions and seeking help  to make their voices heard. Also, if citizens wish to see change,it’s important that they  speak their minds on the matter and try to help out as much as they can.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prisoners Design What They Can't Buy- Luke

Luke Kirchner      I chose to read the article "Objects Made by Prisoners in the United States". This was a very interesting article, as it showed what it's like to be in an American prison and how they make some objects. When Prisoners are in prison, the severity of their punishments can vary, but the lack of creative freedom is often detrimental to each prisoner. This lack of freedom can sometimes drive their creativity to make their own objects, showing off individual expression. Some items like pens and toothbrushes were not given in the full form, due to the fear of prisoners turning them into weapons. Instead, the prisoners thought about how they could fix these problems. The article says "The items shown here, made by inmates in the U.S. prison system, illustrate the severity of restrictions imposed on prisoners as well as the human instinct to persevere through creativity and invention" (The Atlantic).      They took the ink cartridge for the pen an
Read more

Josey - The Fashion Industries Effect on the Enviroment

           Clothing production around the world has doubed since the year 2000, making the fashion indsutry the second biggest polluter in the world. The impact of the indsutry on the enviroment has always been substantial, but in recent years as it has continued to grow, the impact has grown with it. It is estimated that aproximately every second a truck load of clothing is dumped or burned in a landfill. Not only is this a huge amount of resources, but it is also clothing that could easily be reworn or recycled. This is an extremely wasteful amount and is not only affecting the resources that are used, but also the workers who are being forced to produce materials at extremely fast rates.            Wasting these materials is one of the major ways that this is having an effect on the enviroment but another is the waste that is produced and put into the enviroment. Often when factories produce clothing, once they are done they dump chemicals from the factory into rivers. These chemic
Read more

Recovering Ecosystems

Tyler Holland Mr. Roddy IHSS 26 March 2020 Recovering Ecosystems A large challenge for stopping the increasing problems that we face with air pollution and other environmental problems, is that humans are natural control freaks. People try so hard to invent new ways to control the risks that our Earth faces instead of just trying to let nature do its work. Isabella and Charlie, a couple who owned farmland in England, came to the realization that nature solves its own problems, after they had a run in with a feared weed for many farmers. Once they discovered the 'cursed thistle' in their farms they feared the worst as it spread so quickly, but they had decided to let it happen because using pesticides and chemicals was not an option for them. After a while they started to see a flourishing environment in their acres that they had not seen there before, painted lady butterflies flew across the land and after a while caterpillars were crawling all over their 60 acres and ea
Read more