Anti- bullying is one of the main focuses of our school and consequently ours. Our school conducts life classes to educate us on the way in which we could prevent bullying or at least help the victims. So, our language teacher, Vagisha ma’am, asked us to come with a plan to further promote anti-bullying. Hence, few of my grades’ people came together and brainstormed a lot of ideas and finally came up with the idea of making a graffiti as it brought our skills into practice as well as served a purpose. Our skills in Visual arts had never got a huge platform to showcase it hence we took this opportunity to put our hands at work and helped our school community to overcome a serious issue.
LO 3:
After a lot of thinking, reflecting and inquiring we produced our graffiti. We critically thought and chose the colors to fill in the graffiti, the quotes to fit in and also which sort of language and words to choose to have the greatest impact on the victims of bullying. We went through the whole process of planning and then putting our ideas on the wall to achieve the purpose which we initially planned on achieving.
The graffiti served the purpose of consoling and lifting up the people who feel low at some points in time. As this was an initiative by our school and we took it up, we divided ourselves into two groups. 8 of us worked on the graffiti and 4 others worked on pledge posters which helped our work to get done faster. Our graffiti had quotes like “You are smart” “You are kind”
“You are a Hero“ “You are important” “You are beautiful” and “You are brave‘. These closely chosen words served the purpose of empowering the victim and the color scheme which we chose to go with it were bright and positive as they help in creating a jovial atmosphere. So, whenever somebody is feeling low, they could come near the graffiti, read, sit or get themselves clicked on it and get some help. We made two graffitis one which showed arms flexing the biceps and the other was a butterfly with spread out wings. They both symbolize strength, freedom, bravery, and morale. We hope these graffitis help our community as they were made to serve and cure an issue of global significance.
LO 5 & LO 4:
We worked in a group which actually turned out to be quite advantageous. I could easily overlook the troubles we faced when I see them against all the support which we gave to each other. Most of us were really driven to do this activity and thought of it as something we willingly wanted to do and serve the school by using our talents and skills. We all had our unique technique and field we specialized in and that’s what helped us complete this task. We often sought each other’s advice and never actually had a disagreement since we all knew who was the best to give the suggestions for a particular thing and we mutually accepted that suggestion.
Evidently, our task wasn’t one of these which could easily be completed so we had to keep ourselves as well as others motivated and committed to the work. We actually had a really smooth time during the making of the graffiti because we all took initiatives and there were times when few of us didn’t turn up to work but we didn’t take it negatively and gave in our best. The key was to have self-conscience as it was the inner feeling which told us what were we working for and even if few didn’t work to their mark, we were ready to cover up for them. We accepted the reality and it wasn’t surprising when a few people started to lose interest in the work as it demanded a lot of time and patience. We almost spent 3 whole days working on the graffiti plus we came to school early in the morning before our normal classes started then we stayed back after our normal classes ended just to finish our work. On top of all this, we were really thankful to our teachers and coordinators who gave us immense support and mainly the appreciation from people was something which lifted us up and helped us to keep going.
LO 1:
My strength is that I can work with any set of people and make them work equally hard. I can take leadership in group activities quite easily and get everybody to work together and mingle with each other but my weakness is that I get furious when I see people procrastinating during the time when we are supposed to work. This is mainly because when few people don’t work, others have to cover up for them. However, this time when few people didn’t work, I looked around and saw the ones who were there were just as calm and unbothered about the situation. It taught me a silent lesson that instead of getting annoyed and wasting time behind the people who don’t want to work, I should use the time to work on the things and cover up since the ultimate goal is to complete the project at hand.
LO 6:
While working on the graffiti, we reminded ourselves how this would help to solve a global issue. Bullying is a great concern in our world. There are billions of people taking violent or atrocious actions and becoming a victim to this fatal act. Our school is an IB school and of course the students will migrate to all sorts of countries when they pass out hence making them stronger and capable of dealing with bullying is one way to solve the issue. We tried to resolve both the causes of making a person “THE VICTIM”. We made the students pledge for not bullying others and also made a space where the victims could feel uplifted.
