The ICARO proposal intends to plan and develop specific innovative actions to prevent and reduce violence in schools among children between 11-16 years old, through the realization of research, training, counselling and support for teachers, students and parents by using non-formal education, holistically approach and personalized support.The objectives of the project are:- To assess the professional needs of teachers regarding the work with youngsters with difficult behaviours (such as violence, bullying episodes and other forms of youth violence), both as perpetrators or victims;- To create new specific curricula for teachers, educators, social and youth workers aimed at enable them specific competences for identifying, developing and enhancing their skills to deal with violent and difficult behaviour of students.- To create a Manual with new tools and approaches based on non-formal education, holistically approach and personalized support to combat violence in schools and students´ family environment;- Acquiring the necessary competences and skills for teachers from schools that do complementary activities in schools for managing and exploiting methods and approaches to work with students with violent and difficult behaviour in classes. The target groups are the students with violent and difficult behaviours with edges between 11 and 16 years old, their families and their teachers. We expect to involve directly 120 students, 50 families and 200 teachers from the following countries: Spain, Italy, Slovenia and Poland.Nowadays teachers are dealing with many difficulties in order to develop their daily work. The bureaucracy for implementing and adapting new curricula and new educational reforms, lack of time and interest in training, the lack of support and trust from pupils´ families, lack of knowledge, skills and competences to deal with students with special needs and violence behaviour, unstructured families, lack of knowledge of the human being development stages etc. . Students that have violent and difficult behaviours usually come from families that face different difficulties, such as: addictive problems, violent behaviour, cultural difficulties, lack of control and limits within the family, lack of time and interest among parents in paying attention to their children, most of them broken families. This project was born originally in Spain at local level when Euroaccion was requested by the Regional Authorities for Education to organize a series of workshops in several secondary schools of Murcia in order to prevent youth criminality, bullying and other type of disruptive behaviours among the pupils. As a result of that initiative and due mainly to its success, we agreed with partners from other countries to give it a try to that local project, implementing it at transnational level. The innovative aspects are based in several arguments: first of all, we all share the same challenges and needs about preventing youth violence and it would be very enriching to establish synergies among us to improve and further develop a joint strategy, involving non formal learning methodologies, emotional education approaches and Gestalt therapy, and thus to deal effectively and prevent youth violence in secondary schools. Second aspect of innovative character of this project is based in the use of new methods coming from humanistic approaches such as Gestalt psychotherapy or Emotional Education, because such approaches are neither used nor even known by the communities of teachers and practitioners in the formal educational field. A third element that speaks about the innovative dimension of ICARO is the fact that families will be taken into consideration when working with the youth, as they are a fundamental pillar in the educational process of young people. All efforts to prevent violence in the schools would be useless if at home, violence is still an issue and it is part of the pupils' lives.Another element that brings innovation to the project is the lack of experiences or best practices in the partners' countries where there are real and effective examples of projects that combined formal and non-formal education methodologies.Last but not least, we would like to remark that all the partners in our consortium share the same concerns, interests and feel that we all have a common challenge in our countries when it comes to youth violence. ICARO project is based in our conviction that other type of education (Emotional Education) is needed in order to prevent such type of attitudes and problems in our educational centres.
The ICARO project aims to plan and develop specific innovative actions to prevent and reduce violence in schools among children between 11 and 16 years, through the conduct of research, training, counseling and support actions for teachers, students and families through the use of pedagogical approaches based on non-formal education methodologies, holistic approaches such as Gestalt therapy applied to children and art therapy. The objectives of the project are: - To assess the professional needs of teachers with regard to working with young people with difficult behaviors (such as violence, episodes of intimidation and other forms of youth violence), both in the role of perpetrators and victims. ; - Create a new specific curriculum for teachers, educators, social workers and youth with the aim of allowing them to develop specific skills to improve their skills in the management of violent and difficult behavior of students. - Create a Manual with new tools and approaches. based on non-formal education methodologies, holistic approaches such as Gestalt therapy applied to children and art therapy to combat violence in schools and in the family context; - Acquire the necessary skills and abilities for teachers who carry out complementary activities in schools for the application of methods and approaches to work with students with violent and difficult behavior in class. The target groups are students with violent and difficult behaviors between the ages of 11 and 16, their families and their teachers or teachers. 120 students, 30 families and 200 teachers from the following countries have been directly involved: Spain, Italy, Slovenia and Poland. Currently, teachers face many difficulties in developing their daily work. The bureaucracy to implement and adapt new curricula and new educational reforms, lack of time and interest in training, lack of support and confidence of students' families, lack of knowledge, skills and competencies to deal with students with special needs and violent behaviors, the dysfunctionality of some families as well as the lack of knowledge of the stages of development of the human being, are some of the vicissitudes that tarnish the work of prevention of youth violence in the classroom. Students who have violent and difficult behaviors generally come from families that face difficulties of various kinds, such as: addiction problems, violent behaviors, cultural difficulties, lack of control and limits within the family and / or lack of time and interest between Parents to pay attention to their children. This project was originally born in Spain at the local level when the Regional Education Authorities asked Euroacción to organize a series of workshops in several secondary schools in Murcia to prevent juvenile delinquency, bullying and other types of disruptive behavior among students. As a result of this initiative and mainly due to its success, we agreed with partners from other countries to try it at the transnational level. The innovative aspects are based on several arguments: first, we all share the same challenges and needs on the prevention of youth violence and it is very enriching to establish synergies between us to improve and develop a joint strategy, which includes non-formal learning methodologies , approaches inspired by Emotional Education, child Gestalt therapy, art therapy and therefore to effectively treat and prevent youth violence in school. The second aspect of an innovative nature of this project is based on the use of these same new methods from these humanistic approaches because they are not used or known by the communities of teachers and professionals in the formal educational field in general. A third element that talks about the innovative dimension of ICARO is the fact that families are taken into consideration when working with young people, since they are a fundamental pillar in their educational process. All efforts to prevent violence in schools would be useless if violence is still a problem at home and is part of the students' lives. Another element that brings innovation to the project is the lack of experiences or practical improvements in partner countries where there are no real and effective examples of projects that combine formal and non-formal education methodologies. Last but not least, we would like to point out that all the partners in our consortium share the same concerns, interests and feel that we have the same challenge in our countries when it comes to youth violence.