Gaining Access

Getting people to talk about school violence and get interviewed too, is a difficult task. In the beginning aimed to do interviews from a variety of people: teachers, students, school faulty, organisations that help children with behavioural issues, child psychologists, the Department of Education.

Soon I came to realise that it is very difficult to get potential interviewees to yes, or have have some free time to spare a few minutes for the documentary. In the end I had to settle with 4-5 interviewees that would bring out the best parts of the story and aim all my time of getting these few people to agree to an interview.

I now have four interviews and I’m looking into getting before the end of the week as my deadline is next week.

Trying to get children who have been physically abusive towards other students or their own teachers was hard so I decided to focus on the documentary from the teachers point of view, which ed to two great teacher interviews.

The teachers shared their stories and both said that children needed counselling and help from a professional which led to my next interviewee, a child trauma expert, who I interviewed to understand why children act in a physically angry way towards others.

Then I spoke to an organisation that helps children in school turn their lives around for the better, after they have been aggressive or abusive in the past.

This helps me get a full rounded story from the experts and adults point of view.

I am looking into talking to someone from the government/department of education to see if they have any changes set in place to make schools a safer environment for teachers and everyone else. Or I could use third party material to figure this out from articles that have investigated this.