Address: Slovyansk, Yasnaya St 19

Country: Ukraine

 School website

Project: Compass of democracy

 

Working language during the project:

  • English
  • Ukrainian
     

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

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

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

  •  

Target group age range:

  • 11 - 15
  • 15 - 17
     

Level of education:

  • Lower secondary education
  • Upper secondary education

Short description of the project:

Our project started in 2016. We began with student’s self-management. Students were glad to have more authority and decided to encourage school staff and pupils to to help homeless animals. It was just a first step.

Next our project was “Smart kids quest”. Students of the 6th grade divided themselves into groups. Every team had a map of the town. They visited the chemist’s, a boutique, the library, the post office and the Town Hall. Children spoke to every representative of each profession and solved some riddles prepared for them. This project was aimed at showing them that every profession is good, helping them choose a future profession and teaching them to respect the choices of others.

After this project came “Eco ninja quest”. In addition to some interesting tasks, the children helped to pick up rubbish in the park. The aim of this project was to increase their knowledge of the world, discuss environmental problems and teach the children to be environmentally friendly.

The last project was the “Compass of life”. Teachers of Maths, PE, Science, Music, English and Ukrainian created an unusual contest and experiments for children. But the main aim was teambuilding and developing 4 of the democratic competencies: interaction, respect, tolerance, teamwork.

It is the beginning of a long journey for our school. But we already see the results and we want to continue working in this direction. We are glad the children prefer group work as opposed to working individually. They get on well with each other. Children respect opinions and choices that are different from theirs and they trust their teachers. Now co-working is seen not only as a student-student relationship but also as a teacher-student relationship. We hope that we will guide the children to be tolerant, active, able to take the initiative and become conscious citizens.
 

Aims/objectives

  • To increase their knowledge of democratic competencies
  • To develop a culture of democracy
  • To form democratic competencies
     

Expected results/outcomes

Tolerant conscious citizens, who can reflect, respect each other, interact and work as a team.
 

Changes

Students are more tolerant. They respect each other and like teamwork.
 

Challenges you faced

At first it was hard to understand how to provide democratic competencies during the lessons.
 

Time-frame of the project:

From 2016
 

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

  • Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture
  • Compass
  • Compasito
  • Bookmarks