I successfully found a teacher as my adult sponsor because I just learned about global challenges which include cyber bullying in her class. I told her that I want to do further research on cyber bullying, so she agreed to be my sponsor for this project. I also filled out the agreement form after watching the webinar videos through Linktree.

It’s my first time to host a zoom meeting, and this meeting is also my project’s first meeting. It took my several days to find a few friends to join this section meeting as I post a flyer on my Instagram story. I was a little bit nervous to be a host of this meeting, but my friends are nice that they joined the meeting on time and helped me get through the technical difficulties. They also agreed to help me take some screenshots during this meeting. I successfully started the conversation by asking their opinions about bullying. Then, I realized that I was supposed to do it anonymous, so I told them to send me direct messages. I collected many great ideas from them and shared them out. After I explained the definition of bullying, I showed them some examples of cyberbullying and explained that it’s more serious because the victims can’t get rid of them. Then, we went to the next activity which is the signs of a bullied victim. I had them share to the group chat or open microphone. After about 5 minutes, I summarized all the answers and shared the answers on the document. They already knew lots of knowledge related to bullying, so we finished the activity quickly. I also put the suicide prevention hotline in the group chat and told them to screenshot or add to their contacts. It was a great meeting that I had more experiences of being a host of meeting and my friends had changes to know more about bullying. I was so happy to hear they said “thank you” to me at the end of the meeting.

I went over the activities 3, 4 and 5 tonight though zoom meeting with some members. We discussed bullying and cyber bullying first, then I told them to put their ideas in the group chat so that they can understand others’ opinions. Then, I took sometime to explain the statistics and share my own stories during pandemic. One of them also shared that she put much more efforts online during pandemic which made her kind of loss herself. Thankfully, we hadn’t experienced cyberbullying. Moreover, I explained some people’s situations and stories in the document. I also provided the situation for them to brainstorm for the activity “Now, What?”. I also recommended them to read the webinar.

Today, I found out that I already did the activity 2, the signs of cyberbullying, with my group. Thus, we went over a brief review together by having them write down what they can remember. Then, I organized the discussion before I showed them the list of signs again. It turned out that they have remembered a lot about the activity which makes me feel happy. Then, we did the activity 5, positive affirmations. I explained that those positive energy are essential because they may surprisingly light up someone’s day. One of the members posted an instagram story with a question box so that her friends can reply to her how they are doing. Another member said that she sent the five friends messages asking them how are they doing and what’s their plans for summer. I’m so grateful to see them doing this because those little actions may really help some people’s days. Sometimes only one single sentence caring about a person may totally changes that person’s day and even helping them go over the depression they suffer from. It was a great meeting that my members said they realized that they can really help others and maybe put some efforts into stoping cyberbullying.

It’s a perfect date for me to show my group this video because it was the first day of summer vacation. I believe people, especially teenagers, will put more efforts in social media platforms when they are free. Thus, people are at a greater risk of being bullying. As a result, when I had a discussion with them, I told them that they should be extremely careful about using social media. They also realized the seriousness of cyberbullying after we learned that there are many young people who suicide because they suffer from cyberbullying. Hence, we came up with the idea that we should cheer ourselves up by changing the wallpapers of our phones so that we can give ourselves positive energy. We all agreed that the webinar is really useful and meaningful.

I should lead my group to finish reenactment, activity 5, during today’s meeting. However, my group already go over this activity in the previous meeting with the example in the document. So, we decided to create our own example which is “A girl just moved from China to the United States, so she’s not good at English. Therefore, other students always make fun of her at school and online. She has no idea what to do because she hasn’t never experienced anything like this back in her own country. Now, What?” The answers from our group is that she should tell her parents and teachers immediately so that she can get rid of those bullies. Moreover, the teachers should be able to offer her with English classes which can let her build confidence and avoid being bullied again. Also, she can report those cyberbullies’ accounts and maybe stop using the social media or create a new account to use. After the discussion, my group think that doing some practice of “Now, What?”, they can connect to the victims of cyberbullying better and learn to react to those situations. It’s meaningful meeting that we learn a lot. I also have requested to be a member in the private Facebook group. Moreover, we created our own definition for “upstander”: a courageous person who take action to help the bullying victims. To sum up, we believe that if anyone sees bullying (cyberbullying) happened, they should be an upstander to support the victim because the victims are at higher risk of suffering from depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. If we don’t take action to help, the victims may even commit suicide in some rare cases. We must do something before any more bad things happen.

My group created a video about cyberbullying together by collaborating with each other. We believe that this video can truly educate people who watched it because we included statistics, causes, effects, and more related to cyberbullying. Even though others didn’t join this curriculum, they can still know the seriousness of cyberbullying and try to be an upstander to help stoping cyberbullying. (I can’t include the video in the “photo” section.)