Sidney Carlson

IRI /10GT / 3
Nov. 21, 2019
Objectives:
❏ Schedule the interview
❏ Look into the organizations that work on interventions
❏ Do a stasis activity to narrow the topic down more
❏ Possibly contact the special education teacher who experienced foster care first
hand.
Journal:
In the past week, I did two classroom presentations. The first one was with Sra. Stern.

Her class had a mix of freshmen and sophomores. Going in I was nervous, as I did not have any

note cards. My volume and diction were very good; however, I would sometimes draw a blank,

due to nerves. It was not that noticeable though, since I moved on quickly if I did not know what

to say. This can be improved through more practice in front of people. My slides were easy to

follow and my organization was great. The audience was not as engaged as I would have liked.

To combat this, I wanted to explain the impact of my topic more and add an interesting story.

My second presentation was with Mrs. Shultz's freshman class. I changed my

presentation by adding in a story with a shocking visual of a CT scan of children’s brains,

showing that a child who suffered from extreme neglect had a significantly smaller cortical

surface area. Additionally, I presented statistics and had the audience guess what was the cause,

for my introduction. They participated and added to the enthusiasm which was great. The

audience was more interested than in my first presentation. I was significantly less nervous.

Nevertheless, I want to work on being less anxious in the time leading up to the presentations.

Further, I hope to become more relaxed through more public speaking practice. Overall, I
significantly improved my speaking skills, by applying the criticism and adapting to the

audience.

After my conference with Ms. Sassar, I need to narrow my topic down even more. I went

from childhood adversity to child maltreatment to neglect and now I will focus on the foster care

system. My critical reads mention it, so I have the sources to move my topic in that direction. I

want to interview someone who experienced the system and look into interventions that many

organizations use in Baltimore.

My workload in other classes is increasing. Along with the critical reads, english books,

and government chapters, I have a lot of reading to balance. Going forward I am planning on

designating specific days to each task and not put it off to one night. I feel stressed but if I plan

out my time and actually follow the schedule, I can get things done easier.

Generally, I want to get everything organized and make my topic manageable in the

coming weeks.