Claire Tillman

After listening to Claire Tillman and her experiences with humane education i began thinking about the possibility of myself becoming a humane educator. As she said in class she sometimes has a hard time reaching the kids in class due to racial, ethnic, and class differences. I can not imagine how frustrating it must be to try and get these kids to understand the message she is giving, or to expose them to things such as animal cruelty, and have them laugh at her because they just do not understand do to cultural differences. Her presentation reminded me of another encounter i had at the Pit Bull Placebo discussion earlier in the semester. At this discussion i met the director of a Humane Society of America program geared towards ending dog fighting. We discussed her role in preventing dog fighting through education. During our conversation Mick Vick came up, he is part of the same campaign she directs. His role is to go out to inner city schools in Philadelphia and talk to the students about the negative impact dog fighting has in many facets of life. Though she admitted to disliking him strongly, the director i spoke with said that she does respect him. He is reaching out to the community, sincerely trying to end dog fighting, and is reaching an audience that she, as a white middle class woman would be unable to reach. I found it interesting that Vick, a former dog fighter, is having an effective role in fighting to end dog fighting, while people like Claire Tillman and possibly me one day will struggle to have our message heard.