RISE – Resilience Inhibiting Social Exclusion Erasmus Project

Project Title

RISE – Resilience Inhibiting Social Exclusion

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Disabilities – special needs

Project Summary

Backround and objectives:
Pupils with special needs are often extremely vulnerable when trying to build realistic picture of themselves and the world around them. Media affects them in multisensory ways. Without proper guidance, strong resilience and much needed multiliteracy skills it can lead to many types of challenges and put these pupils in a risk of marginalization and seclusion. With the help of project RISE we wanted to empower hospitalized pupils and help them become true subjects of their own lives and future. We wanted to make sure that our SEN pupils have the means and skills to exploit all the opportunities they will possibly have and to participate fully, but sustainably in future society.
With this project we hoped to add courage of our pupils to communicate with others in similar circumstances with foreign languages. We provided various platforms to raise intercultural awareness and build bridges between European nations. During this project our pupils were able to get much needed peer support and make new friends. The main goal of this project for the pupils was to gain more resilience to lead a happier and fuller future life.

Participants:
Tierna School’s Hospital School Unit in Oulu, Finland is a special school that provides education for the compulsory education aged children who are treated in Oulu University Hospital for both somatic and/or psychiatric causes. Pupils come from a large geographical area in Northern Finland.
ZSO Nr 9 in Gdansk, Poland is a school at psychiatric hospital and provides education, therapy and other activities for children and youth suffering different mental diseases.
Linn Dara School in Dublin, Ireland is a school based in an Inpatient unit of child and adolescent mental health unit. They also work in the connecting day hospital programme. They are a designated special school in the category of Severe Emotional Behavioural Disturbance. Their students present with various mental health difficulties.
Children Hospital School of Istituto Comprensivo “Giacomo Ferrari” in Parma, Italy is made of a primary and a junior secondary school for pupils who are unable to attend school because of chronic, acute or other medical health needs.

Activities and methods:
Pupils worked with themes of multiliteracy and resilience in various practices. They became familiar with the goals of United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and learned media criticism, the correct use of social media and netiquette. They explored experiential learning methods by processing stories in multiliteracy ways, and producing games, stories and art for their peers.
Staff training events were organized as workshops for learning new methods and approaches regarding multiliteracy and resilience skills. In order to be able to use new learning methods with pupils the teachers went through the same experiential learning process themselves.

Results and impact:
All staff from each partner school had possibilities to build their professional skills through this project. Not every staff member felt they were fluent with English language, ICT skills or even mastering all the multiliteracy skills needed themselves. During the project we learned different kinds of methods and ways to tackle various obstacles which are common to our SEN pupils. Emphasis being on the resilience strengthening working methods was expected to promote the prevention of social exclusion.
We exchanged ideas and opinions and were able to compare our school systems, and based on the good practices we shared, we can continue developing our schools.The work well-being was seen rising and we were able to further develop our team teaching and planning skills through this project. During the visits we added our knowledge of partner countries and their cultures.

Longer term benefits:
Pupils in hospital schools will feel less isolated through finding out that there are pupils with similar experiences and challenges also in other countries. Sharing potential solutions to their problems, when exchanging experiences with each other, has had and will have positive effects on their self-esteem and help strengthen their resilience.
Exchanging ideas and experiences with European colleagues and finding out the differences as well as the similarities in different countries’ schooling systems has broadened staff’s perspective and helped develop our teaching skills. The aim was to create better possibilities for disadvantaged children and youth to gain greater sense of belonging into European cultural heritage and its multicultural community. Having possibilities to visit and work with each other in their schools and by this improve both teachers’ and students’ confidence about working together across languages and cultures has given us tools and methods for future teaching and development work. This also gives the staff better possibilities in developing a greater sense of belonging into European teaching community.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 83905,38 Eur

Project Coordinator

Tiernan koulu & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Linn Dara School
• Zespół Szkół Ogólnokształcących Nr 9
• Istituto Comprensivo “Giacomo Ferrari”