Sunday 27th March 2011:

Today, I read the first chapter of the ‘Bullying’ book, ‘Bullies and Victims’. It may have made sense to read this chapter first, however, I feel that gaining in-depth insight first helped me to understand the importance of anti-bullying and how affected the bullies and victims can become.

This chapter spoke about ‘the tell-tale signs’ (of spotting someone who is being bullied). Some of the signs included: be unwilling to go to school (and making excuses), come home starving (because their lunch money had been taken), start stammering, bullying others, stop eating or be obsessively clean (as a reaction to being called ‘fatty’ or ‘dirty’). I feel that this signs are really important and will change depending on the victim, the bully and the situations which occur. However, I do think that many of these could lead to issues in the future – eg: unable to trust anyone, being scared of new situations, or perhaps illnesses such as ‘anorexia’ could take place. Even extreme cases such as suicide need to be remembered. I think it will be beneficial to explore these issues further (especially those which can affect someone for life), to illustrate the dangers of bullying.

Target for today: Read more of ‘bullying’ book to see how victims can be affected by bullying.

Target for tomorrow: Research and study what bullying can lead to further, to see the effects of bullying, and produce images in sketchbook relating to these. Start screen-printing process. Annotate sketchbook pages to evaluate and reflect on work so far.