Roadmap to Building a Caring and Respectful School Community Erasmus Project

Project Title

Roadmap to Building a Caring and Respectful School Community

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; Gender equality / equal opportunities; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage

Project Summary

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) states that children should be brought up in the spirit of peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality and solidarity. Article 29 states that the education of the child shall be directed to developed respect for the pupil’s cultural identity, language and values and for cultures different from his or her own and to prepare them for a responsible life as an adult in a free society in a spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality and friendship among all people. Children start to notice differences between people and to learn about them in very early age. At the same time, they develop attitude towards people who are different from them. Therefore it is very important that tolerance is handled with children at very early age. Sometimes bullying is invisible or when it does happen, not everyone is aware of it. It can ruin children’s lives, research shows that its effects can last well into adulthood in terms of impact on emotional, physical and mental health. Bullying was a common problem for all partners although in different ways; Turkish partners have problems with boys fighting (physical bullying), the Greek school is experiencing bullying against marginal groups such as disable and special needs, while in UK the main issues are cyber bullying and sexting, in Italian, Romanian and Portuguese school the main issue was a lack of knowledge and understanding form teachers and knowing how to best prevent and respond. In our planning application we identified common issues and then build themes to cover each issue. We also held a teachers training session to insure that whole school was involved not just students. This further promoted inclusiveness as one of the three topics focused in this project.

We selected social inclusion as priority as the problems with bullying stem of excluding individuals as the bullying is essentially social problem. Schools are social environments and there will be times when there are disagreements, when relationships become strained and when conflicts arise. Sometimes this leads to bullying, sometimes the bullying is motivated by other factors including attitudes or values which may lead some children and young people to treat others negatively because of their appearance, gender, economic/social status or background. In the project we covered all those issues within our themes. For example, we addressed inclusion and gender inequalities in the theme two (C2) ‘All different, all equal’ and in the theme three (C3) we focused on SEND and disabilities.
The six partners schools are diverse in size (number of students), location (three schools are in rural locations and three are based in the city), type of school (comprehensive/state, supported by business), student ages (ages from 9 to 18).
The activities taken place in the two year project included: preparation that was shared on-line via eTwinning platform (https://twinspace.etwinning.net/65828/home ), international collaboration partner hosting Mobility and one teacher training event. We had four face-to-face Mobility and one virtual due to restrictions of travel because of Covid19.
The main results were producing a set of training activities and strategies to train a core group of students to become Anti-Bullying Ambassadors. By the end of the project each partner had at least 15 students trained in the peer support scheme, in total 166 students have been trained and 26 teachers have been involved in the training of Anti-Bullying Ambassadors. These will be accessible for the future years, after the project finished. While, at the teacher’s training in C5, two teachers from each partner school and 15 local attendees were provided with the current pedagogy in preventing, reducing and responding to bullying.
Other results were:
• Applied most current pedagogy in order to prevent and reduce the number of incidences of bullying this also increased the knowledge and experience gained by all participants, learners (140 students directly participated in at least one theme/mobility, of these there were 251 students who were involved in mobilities and 104 local participants) and staff involved 68 in mobilities and further 24 teachers in the training event (C5); social inclusion (priority one), cultural heritage (horizontal priority), promote acquisition of skills and competences (priority three).
• Production of training activities to teach a core group of students to become Anti-Bullying Ambassadors. In total 166 students have been trained in partner schools. They will provide integral part in reducing the number of bullying incidences and promote social inclusion (priority one). This had an impact on increased 21st Century skills, such as collaboration, communication, developing literacy skills by using media and technology showing life skills such as ability to lead and showing initiative.

Project Website

https://nobullyingnow.wordpress.com/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 137004,4 Eur

Project Coordinator

TENDRING TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Istituto Comprensivo Statale Politeama
• Scoala Gimnaziala Pietroasa
• IMKB 24 KASIM ANADOLU LISESI
• Daily Junior High School of Petra of Lesvos
• FORAVE – Associação para a Educação Profissional do Vale do Ave