7th update

This week I've run into some troubles. I thought I was able to be excused from the IRB but it looks like I may have to write up a proposal for them explaining how I plan to protect my subjects in the study. So later on I will find out if I have to do this, but in the mean time I started doing my activities with the girls in my study. We did the activity called "Wrinkled Wanda" this past Friday. I was really excited about doing this activity with them and I had another mentor with me to keep the participants under control. At first it started out difficult to get them to want to the activity but when I said they couldn't stay in the room with me if they didn't participate, so they started coming up with examples of bullying statements and wrote them down. However, one girl asked me if it was okay to write bad words because she has heard them and then that started all of them writing swear words they've heard at school. I explained that they were taking advantage of the purpose of what we were doing and they stopped. I brought them back by asking them to write bullying statements that they've seen on facebook and that set them off with lots of things to say. When we created the other body which they named Stephenie they wrote down lots of good things to say to people and things you can say to people to comfort, console, or just check in with them. After we held up the two bodies (Wanda and Stephenie) and talked about the difference between the two of them and why the words we chose are so important. I think they benefited from this activity but I need to work on getting them focused and participating.