Address: 138, Rokossovskiy Avenue, Minsk

Country: Belarus

 School website

Project: There is always a choice

Working language during the project:

Russian
 

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

Preventing violence and bullying
 

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

Valuing human dignity and human rights

Responsibility

Conflict-resolution skills
 

Target group age range:

11 - 15 and 15 - 19
 

Level of education:

Lower secondary education

 Upper secondary education

Short description of the project:

Aims/objectives

 Our project is creating a democratic culture among students, aimed at preventing the cruelty and bullying among minors. Students spend a lot of time communicating on social networks. Social networks serve as a platform for informal communication for teenagers and give them the opportunity to make friends, learn a lot of new information and get rid of the feeling of loneliness. However, not all children are aware of the risks associated with social network communication. Many children have experience of bullying and cyber-bullying. However, not all of them know where to go in the case of aggression. This work is carried out with both students and their parents. Each of the extracurricular activities develops rules of behaviour for difficult situations.

Aim: creating conditions for creating a democratic culture for students.

Objectives:

  1. to analyze the current educational practice and determine the sources for developing democratic culture;
  2. to determine the theoretical and methodological foundations for creating democratic culture for students;
  3. to research the level of students' democratic culture;
  4. to develop and introduce into the school’s educational practice a work system for creating a students' democratic culture;
  5. to involve the parent community in project implementation.
     

Expected results/outcomes

 It can be expected that the introduction of a work system for prevention of violence and bullying into the school’s educational practice will help improve the students' democratic culture and will allow for individual preventive work among minors.

Changes

Students have to learn to make informed choices in situations of uncertainty. The work on this project will help them to improve their democratic culture.

Challenges you faced

On the one hand, adults talk about the need to comply with certain socially approved rules and regulations. On the other hand, the spirit of the Internet’s content is sometimes very far from that necessary for developing a child's personality. Promoting a consumer attitude to the world and society and cultivating disrespect towards the environment have a negative impact on fragile personalities. All this undermines the children's self-confidence, their ability to self-regulate, assert themselves in life’s important situations.

Time-frame of the project:

  January 2018 – May 2020
 

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

Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture

Democratic governance of schools