Reaction to Claire - Mary Penxa

I found Claire's presentation moving on a lot of accounts. First and foremost I thought it was awesome that she does her presentations for children so young. I think that the younger we start educating the youth on these important issues, the more likely they are to have a positive impact.

As a future educator myself, I was eager to see how Claire approaches these different topics and issues with kids as young as eight and nine years old. I loved how interactive the presentation was, it was really engaging and I think this is most likely extremely successful for kids who may not always have the longest attention span. I found the images rather rough for children so young to see, but commend Claire for taking the initiative and really branching out and not sugar coating the issues for these young students.

This point in particular really made me think a lot about how people are shielded from these things and it often times has a way of breeding ignorance on this and many other topics. When I was volunteering at the PSPCA a mother and a child were waiting outside of the dog room, the little girl commented that she wanted to go in and look at the dogs.

"No, I don't want you to see that. You're too young." told the mother to the confused daughter, and truth be told it really made me sad.

When people are kept from seeing what is happening, it almost allows them to believe the problem isn't that bad. I know many people personally that say they could never volunteer at an animal shelter because it would be too hard for them to have to see the animals like that. I do admit it is very hard, but it's easy to see that if people distance themselves from these problems how they can almost forget about them in a sense.

This is why I believe Claire's presentation was particularly effective. She didn't shy away from the real heart of the problem she was addressing and quite honestly her presentation will probably stick with those kids much longer than it would have if she hadn't shown them any images at all.

All in all the presentation was great and it really did show that a big part of the solution to the problem of animal mistreatment comes in our youth, because they are the future.

-Mary Penxa