I am fully aware that in recent months my postings on here have gone off the ‘drama’ train but I feel this is an eduactional blog and my posts are still relevent to educating people.

I have been moved by the press coverage of the number of teenagers taking their own life recently because of bullying due to their sexuality or assumed sexuality. I was to take this time to say something.

When I started secondary school I found my love for Drama, but because of my like for Drama and Dance I found myself an easy target for bullying. I was called ‘gay’, ‘poof’, ‘arse bandit’ everyday of my school life for 5 years. During the height of the bullying my mum took me out of school as the school didn’t do anything, I went back and the bullying continued. At this precise time of my school career I didn’t even know if I was gay or not so this bullying was because the bullies ‘assumed’ I was gay. In S5 my family found me deeply upset and I had done something stupid – this became a turning point in my life. 

I want to tell everyone out there who is suffering any form of bullying at this moment across the world that it does get better, it honestly does.  It may seem at this moment that there is nothing no one can say or do to change anything but I promise you there is a world out there full of acceptance and love. When you leave school you never have to see your bullies again, you can become who you want to me. Know that you are loved by your family and your friends and you are not alone. Before you do anything – talk to someone, there is so much to look forward to, and I look forward to sharing this crazy world with you. Look at me… I have a wonderful family who support me, a niece who makes me thank whoever I am here to see her grow, laugh and tell me about Nursery, I have wonderful friends who make me laugh and cry, a job I love so much and the creative energy to make theatre. It’s all there for you too. Just give it time and talk to someone, anyone.

I promise it get’s so much better.

This month seen the annual International Suicide Prevention Awareness Week.

Around two people die from suicide in Scotland every day and it is the biggest killer of young Scottish men, yet suicide is still one of society’s remaining taboos.

Did you do anything in your school for this? I don’t think we did.

I feel as teachers we need to enable our young people to open up and discuss their feelings without the fear of stigma; like it or not, we all have feelings of depression at some point in our lives and maybe if we, as human beings, were taught to talk about how we feel then ‘suicide’ wouldn’t be the difficult topic it is today.

As a teacher of Drama I am aware that I have the skills to be able to discuss, through Drama exercises using Boal techniques, various issues that affect our young people and the world in which they live in BUT I am also aware that some teachers find it difficult to tackle topics we don’t know much about; as I have found with Holocaust education. Scotland as a country needs to tackle the difficult issue of suicide and make people realise that by talking we can change the outcome.

Choose Life is a Scottish Government run organisation which tackles the issues of Suicide – I hope someone in the Government reads this posts and makes Suicide prevention a priority training for all teachers – we all have responsibility to make sure our young people feel secure in themselves.