SafeSchool - Promoting students’ engagement in the prevention of bullying in schools

The Erasmus+ project SafeSchool – Promoting students’ engagement in the prevention of bullying in school was implemented by Ikaros Foundation from Romania together with its partners, School 79 from Romania, Confederacion Espanola de Centros de Ensenanza and Collegio Nuestra Senora del Buen Consejo from Spain, the organization Mentortec from Portugal and Ente di Ricerca e Formazione from Italy. The project was addressed to all actors involved in education (teachers, parents and other professionals) and pupils. The main objective of the project was to raise awareness on the harm that bullying causes and the effects it has on children even in their adulthood. In this project we focused on proposing working strategies and methods addressed to all actors, teachers, parents and pupils as each of them has own contribution in this equation and is an important factor of change. Therefor, at first, we did some research, shared knowledge and impressions among us and created a Compendium of Best Practices in working with bullying situations and a Resource Pack with lots of creative and interactive ideas that teachers or parents can use with their children. Than, we created an online training course who was addressed mainly to teachers but parents have access at it too, and we approached 8 key subjects that we consider to be the most important when dealing with bullying: 1)Why is Social Emotional learning so important and how to teach SEL to children 2)How to adapt the school environment and to create a supportive classroom atmosphere3)Teachers and school staff need to understand the mechanisms through which peers can become real supporters in the work with bullying4)How to create groups of support in school, to train peer leaders and to empower them5)How to create strong and close school family bridges6)How to implement reflection activities in school or simply to practice reflection with our children7)What is important to know about school policies and procedures when talking about bullying8)How to bring more of the non-formal and informal education in school as these two are very powerful and helps strengthening cohesion among peersAt the online training course have participated so far 61 people, all of them working in the field of education and 56 of them have participated to the three physical trainings that we organized in Bucharest, Rome and Madrid. After that, pupils, parents and other teachers have been involved in workshops and focus groups dedicated to them, in all partner countries, with the occasion of the four multiplier events or apart from them. More than 600 pupils, parents and teachers have participated and more will come as dedicated workshops will continue to take place in schools even after the closure of the project. Another important result of our project is the Multimedia Kit which was developed under the Intellectual Output no 3 and who includes a set of interactive and diverse instruments and tools to be used by teachers or parents when discussing bullying situations with children. The Multimedia Kit includes infographics for pupils and teachers, a creative online fairy tale about bullying, a short movie about how to identify, combat and prevent bullying situations, a booklet with ideas about how to improve the school-family bridges, a step by step guide DO IT YOURSELF reflection activities and exercises, a booklet about school policies related to bullying and a boardgame named What Would You Do. All project results have been already tested and used in our activities with teachers, parents and pupils so far. On the short term the project had a significant impact on the participants and the project partners. On the long term, the partners will continue to monitor the work of the teachers who participated to trainings so far, based on the Action Plans that they have developed in learning mobilities. Also, partners will continue to organize workshops in other minimum 3 schools/year from the local community. This will help also partners to deepen their understanding of the bullying phenomenon as more feedback will be collected and they will have the possibility to observe and discuss with pupils, to understand their point of view and to apply the methods and strategies developed in the SafeSchool project. For the two partners who are schools, Collegio Nuestra Senora del Buen Consejo from Spain and School 79 from Romania, observation activities and data collection will be easier to do and impact here is very high as project teams and teachers are very committed to continue this work. In order to ensure that each partner will collect relevant data in the future which will help us all improving our work or developing other projects, we have created a Data Collection Questionnaire which we will use in the 2 years of sustainability. Ikaros Foundation is responsible to do an overall monitoring and to collect these data every six months, than to discuss them with the partners.