Armed Robbery at Kennedy High School

Kennedy Student Robbed at Gunpoint

Interviewing the principal is hard. Interviewing our school resource officer is hard, but throw in a topic that is at the front of a heated debate and it just got harder.

Recently a Kennedy High School student was robbed at gunpoint in our school parking lot. The student is fine, the school and police handled the situation quickly and effectively, but students were concerned about the lack of communication. Students were upset that they were not notified immediately of the perceived threat.  The focus of this podcast is to help students and families understand the reaction of administration and the police. Hopefully, it gets everyone the answers they want. 

As the interview approached I learned how important research was to the process.  I talked with some of my students and figured out what they wanted to know. That gave me a starting point. 

I spent some time researching gun laws in Iowa, I wanted to be prepared with the safety measures the state has in place to protect school grounds. A lot of the talk around the campus seems to point toward this instance being someone’s fault. That is just not correct. We have school rules, a police officer and state and national laws put in place to protect us. The fact of the matter is not everyone obeys the law. As the research progressed it was clear that we have a lot of things in place to protect us and it is in fact a class D felony to have a gun on school grounds.

As the interview started it came to my attention that I had to find a way to keep the conversation moving.  Both of my guests were prepared and wanted to talk about the situation. Their answers were longer than I expected. It was clear I would have to do a lot of editing to get the podcast down to 10 minutes.  I started taking notes as we recorded about the elements that I liked and wanted to try to include. When I was finished I had over 25 minutes of good audio.  

The editing process was slow.  I deleted pauses, deleted entire questions and tried to get it down the best moments before I started cleaning up umms, etc.  Perhaps the greatest thing I learned from this interview was to be ready to go wherever their answers take the conversation. I constantly jumped off script and asked a question that I had not planned, because I was interested and wanted to know the answer. Research helped know what my students wanted to know.  I spent time with my classes and asked them to help me create questions, because this podcast is for them and I wanted to get it right. That helped me greatly. It let me see it from their perspective and answer the stuff that was important to them. 

I enjoyed the podcasting element of this course and cannot wait to continue on with it in the future. I might even take the extra stuff from this interview and create a follow up to this podcast. Enjoy the podcast.