We’ve all heard of Austin’s butterfly…..so how about Keisha’s butterfly? For our latest update from Crew Young I’ve captured comments from students describing their reactions to recent tragic events in America, and shared their current work and progress on the DofE First Aid course.
Keisha e-mailed me a piece of her beautiful art work last week, and I simply had to include it in our blog as an example of work that she’s really proud of:
Great work here Keisha – I like how you’ve blended the colours together in both the butterfly and the plant. Remember Austin’s butterfly? How he crafted and re-crafted his work acting on kind, specific and helpful peer feedback?
Dominic reminded us that he’s still training for MMA and for his DofE Award:
Well done Dominic, we already know that “you are amazing!” at times, but it’s helpful to be reminded of it now and again!
Summer wished to contribute her thoughts about the death of George Floyd in America:
“...Even things that many people grew up with, things such as comedic blackface or use of racial slurs, were only deemed acceptable due to the deeply rooted history of racism that, despite slavery being abolished, was never truly made illegal.
Therefore, I don’t believe that our generation is “overreacting” as many older generations may have the media believe.
No, we are not overreacting. We are thinking. We are watching. We are solving. We have seen what is wrong with the way things are, and we want to make sure it is never the same way again.
All lives cannot matter until black lives matter.“
Keisha agreed: “I support the Black Lives Matter movement and I think it was very upsetting and a little unsettling what the police did to George Floyd”.
Maclaren added : “I feel that George Floyd’s death has pushed an issue that was already
at the boiling point from all of the other deaths like this one“.
Louie thought: “The death of George was truly tragic, and it’s upsetting and scary that there are police officers out who took an oath to help and to protect the people in their community, but I’m against the rioting just because he was black, and that they think that the cops killed him because he was black, when the real story was the cop was just a bad officer…“.
Lewis was also less persuaded of a racial element to the incident: “It shouldn’t be all about racism and it has became that. What happened was a police officer was brutal and inhumane to a man. Just because it was a white man and a black man does not mean it is racist at all….”.
One of the things that I’ve really missed during lockdown is the opportunity afforded in Crew sessions for us to discuss and debate key worldwide events such as the Coronavirus Pandemic, or George Floyd’s death. We do this within a compassionate framework where differences of opinion and perceptions are welcomed, voiced, respected and encouraged, especially when they might link directly to our expeditions such as, in this case, “Stand up!”.
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