Today my class only had two lessons at school which was a double period of PE. We had an assessment in Trampolining.The reason why we only had to lessons was because people came in to talk to us about knife and gun crime, which is big in London.
After break, a policewoman from the CO19 branch of the Metropolitan Police came. The CO19 branch if anyone doesn't know is the Specialist Firearm (guns) and Knife Command branch, they are armed with guns.
She showed us a PowerPoint of how many teenagers died in 2008-09 and there were 43. They all died by either stabbing, shootings and cut throats.
After, the lady showed us pictures of guns and asked to find the imitations... we all failed miserably.
“This is why we treat all guns as real..." she said, later we watched real life footage of what happens when somebody gets stabbed and what the police have to do, it was really sad because the person died and we saw so of the funeral, no one came to testify and the killer came out a free man later to kill someone else.
Secondly, Sally Knox, mother of Robert Knox, Harry Potter star, came to talk with us about what happened when her son got stabbed. She played a video that was made by his friends after he died.
After lunch, two men came from the Greenwich youth theatre and showed us a play called "Brothers". In the play 'Brothers' we met 2nd generation Nigerian twins growing up in the streets of London. Ken, with his traditional ideas and values, was becoming increasingly alienated from Tai, who lives by the ethics of the street. It's a complex and potentially dangerous sibling rivalry where anger, violence and membership of a polarized street culture clash with family loyalty. When they finished the play they asked us what the play was about.
What was so cleverly done about the play was that Ken was actually dead and acting as his conscience. Tai had the choice of either taking revenge on the boys who killed his brother or leaving them alone and carrying on his life.
These two choices were symbolized as either the black shirt (bad) or the white shirt (good). At first Tai chose the black shirt in an instant and wasn't listening to his brother who was telling him to wear the white but at the end he chose white.
At the end, they said that we were the best behaved and had excellent ideas, which was a great way to promote Year 8.
