Address: Chkhorotsku, village Khabume

Country: Georgia

 School website

Project: Big problems in little comics

Working language during the project:

• Georgian
• English
   

Themes of the Council of Europe project “FREE to SPEAK, SAFE to LEARN - Democratic Schools for All” covered:

• Making children’s and students’ voices heard
• Preventing violence and bullying
• Tackling discrimination
• Improving well-being at school
   

Competences from the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (CDC) addressed and where / how they were integrated:

• Valuing democracy, justice, fairness, equality and the rule of law
  Students gained information on mobbing and developing a democratic culture framework package, students gained experience in respecting human dignity and rights.
• Respect
  In the process of sharing and reviewing videos created as part of the anti-bullying campaign, students showed respect for the people who became victims of mobbing.
• Empathy
  Students created comics whose main purpose was to express the negative consequences caused by mobbing. While working on the comics, the students expressed sympathy for the oppressed characters.
   

Target group age range:

• 5 - 11
• 11 - 15
• 15 -19 
   

Level of education:

• Primary education
• Lower secondary education
• Upper secondary education

Short description of the project:

Mobbing is a very serious problem and it is one of the most common forms of violence in the school environment that interferes with the democratic development of the school.

According to the law on general education, the school space must be non-discriminatory.

In this regard a short-term educational project was planned and implemented in Khabume 1 Public school. It aimed at prevention of violence and development of democratic values. In the school project 50 primary school and middle school students who were involved in the project developed the democratic framework package and prepared a presentation on how mobbing hinders a democratic society. The project involved the departments of Elementary, Georgian Language and Literature, social sciences in the following disciplines: Georgian literature, civics, history, IT and art.

Elementary students prepared an informative presentation on mobbing and they were given an interactive lesson on mobbing.

The art teacher gave a workshop to the students on how to make an interesting comic.

In the next stage, the elementary school students planned to show a short animation about mobbing.

After watching it students marked the main idea which they saw on the video.

They evaluated how and in what form the author of the project expressed his/her anti-mobbing action. Elementary and high school students distributed and created anti-mobbing slogans and created simple and colourful comics in which they conveyed their vocation –No mobbing.

On the final day, the students held an online conference where they invited representatives of the school self-government, school departments and presented the comic they created. They mentioned which human rights are violated during bullying and how to behave in a similar situation. As part of the project, students organised a comic book exhibition displayed in the school corridor.

Electronic versions of the works were prepared and uploaded on the social network and on the school page.
 

Aims/objectives

• Informing the school community about mobbing.
• Create anti-discrimination descriptors
• Collaboration of middle school students and primary school students.
   

Expected results/outcomes

• Middle-school and primary school students jointly created presentation products.
• The students involved in the project as a team created a recommendation framework package.
   

Changes

• The school has gained experience in collaboration between levels.
• Several departments and interdisciplinary teams with no experience of the school participated in the project.
   

Challenges you faced

• Low motivation of students against the background of pandemic-induced regulations
• Comic book creation competences
   

Time-frame of the project:

The school project for the development of democratic culture was short-term, lasting one month
 

Council of Europe materials on citizenship and human rights education used while preparing or implementing your practice:

• Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture
• Living Democracy - manuals for teachers
• Addressing violence in schools through EDC/HRE
• Mirrors