This educational scenario is part of the Action Plan with the title "Breaking a wall - Building a community" which is about to run in the 1st Junior High School of Markopoulo in 2016-2017.
About the "Breaking a wall - Building a community" Action Plan
This Action Plan is based on the on previous positive experience of schools collaborating with parents via the educational project “Schools of collaborative learning” that the 1st Junior High School of Markopoulo -among other schools- implemented during 2011-2013, under the aegis of the Department of Psychology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
It is also based on the former successful project “e-step” which was implemented by Hellinogermaniki Agogi and many schools in Greece and other European countries during the last two years concerning parental engagement in school.
Both these projects have proved that the parental role is significant in building up a strong school community of empathy, positive communication and academic achievement.
One main principle of the “Breaking a wall - Building a community” implementation is group learning which is proved to be the best method of active and interactive learning.
Another principle is life-long learning, according to which learning is –beyond the typical education- an endless dynamic process throughout life that leads to a “society of learning, in terms of the recent theories of education. In consequence,
Adults’ Education stresses the adults’ need to be active members of this “society of learning” living in a world of constant change determined by socio-political economical and technological conditions.
In this world, Distance learning emphasizes the exploitation of technology in education and life-long learning. Parents as adults have to support their children not only physically, or psychologically but, to a large extend, digitally. So by calculating their digital literacy, parents can communicate better with their children.
The "Breaking a wall - Building a community" action plan concerns the creation of workshops about important aspects such as digital literacy, bullying and internet safety, non violent communication, qualitative evaluation of students' academic achievements, professional orientation and sex education.
About the “Building an anti-bullying net” scenario
The scenario is based on educational programmes about internet safety that the 1st Junior High School of Markopoulo has developed during the last 5 years as well as on the Erasmus+KA2 project “Accepting ourselves and accepting the others - Accepto” about preventing school bullying via self-esteem (http://www.acceptogreece.wordpress.com) that the school participated in with schools from 8 European countries during the last 2 years 2014 -2016. In the end of Accepto, this workshop will be, hopefully, a way of continuing and disseminating the ideas of the programme.
The first principle of the scenario is that school bullying is the result of a complex condition where domestic relations in conjunction with the school environment reflect upon a student’s self-image and socialization and lead to the development of bully/bullied/passive observer’s behavior. Therefore, bullying is not a purely school problem but a social problem as well, the prevention of which depends on the collaboration between school and family.
The second principle is peer education which has proved to be one of the most successful approaches in the Erasmus+ Accepto project. As far as cyber bullying is concerned, it is crucial parents to be aware of the possible dangers so they can help their children. This means that, parents need to be digitally qualified in order to be able to protect or support the students. Who could be the most efficient to do so than the students who are so familiar with the digital world and have already experienced performing their own lesson plans about bullying? And how could parents come closer to their children than by playing an interactive digital game with them?
The aim of the scenario is the creation of a workshop about bullying, during which a physical and digital community of parents will be developed with the aim of students as educators. The students who have already worked on bullying via the previous projects mentioned above will introduce the parents to the types of bullying and they will help them form their digital identity. In parallel, activities for non violent communication will take place while the parents will play the digital game “second life” simulating bullying phenomena.
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