From violence to coexistence

In our Project: “ From violence to coexistence”, were involved five countries ( Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain), each of them has experience in different types of programs or methodologies for the prevention of bullying. This project was born from the need we had in our schools to have enough strategies to combat bullying and the number of conflicts between students that had increased in recent years. The experience of each institution regarding the prevent the bullying was essential for the Project, to workshops, and to disseminate and extrapolate to other European schools. The aims the objectives proposed in the project such as: form a tolerant attitude towards differences, prevent bullying and verbal and physical violence at school, train children in social skills and problem solving, work in values education, work different methodologies to prevent bullying ... were achieved almost complete. Regarding the tangible results achieved, we can highlight: the common website of the project, training materials (teacher's manual), digital book about the topic, short film in black and white about different types of bullying, stories of harassment using stop motion methodology. .. likewise, the most significant strategic results were: exchange, analysis of good practices, motivation for teachers and students, adoption of methodologies and approaches for a more effective competitive work, improve the inclusion levels of children ... The activities were carried out jointly at least between two or three countries and using different methodologies. In the school of each country, both in the workshops and in the seminars, they explained to the rest of the partners the methodologies they used to prevent bullying and with which they achieved the best results. Example in Portugal Person Dolls methodology, Greece -stop motion ... At the end of each workshop or seminar activity, each country filled out a questionnaire to evaluate it and in the coordination meeting the results, difficulties encountered and proposals for improvement were presented. The most appropriate methodologies and activities were studied according to the age of the students. For example: Students from 3 to 7 years old carried out yoga activities, collaging emotions and activities with the Person Dolls methodology. the 8 to 12 year old students made the short film about different types of bullying, stop motion, dance for peace.. at the beginning of the Project families, other institutions and the town halls collaborated and participated in some activities with the students. After, with the pandemic Covid 19, we had to the activities virtually and some were modificated, a mong them we highlight: Kahoots, geneally, performance, acrostic, dictionary… To disseminate, we did some seminars and workshops before the pandemic and after, we used different networks, e-twinning, blogs, common website. At the beginning the Project we defined what wanted to achieve in what time and how we were going to organize the Budget, evaluation, activities..Also, we stablished an evaluation commission formed by the headmaster and 2 teachers , They were in charge of the evaluating project, activities, resources , solving the problems presented and the improvement proposals. Other commission was created to control the budget (in a dossier with the invoices and expenses for each activity). On the other hand, An expert in the person doll methodology from the Guadalupe school, trained us in the methodology and after several workshops she trained us so that we could train other teachers from our schools or from other institutions. In the Netherlands, we were trained in the stop motion application, how to use it for our topic, in Italy, it was about social skills and emotions ... the impact on the participants, both teachers and students was beneficial to improve the skills in the different methodologies and implement them in the daily curriculum. Students learnt to develop skills to solve problems and modify behavior, developing empathy and acquiring more and more respect and tolerance for differences. Regarding the general evaluation , the evaluation commission had the misión of guarantee and adequate the evaluation process during the development of the Project. It was carried out an initial evaluation ( before the Project), intermediate evaluation( at the end of the first year) and the final evaluation ( at the end of the Project). We used qualitative indicators (digital book,Person Dolls Manual, short film… and quantitative evaluation: number of participants in the Project, questionaires, interviews, visit to the web… Once the project has finished, the products of the activities carried out, the methodologies used and the skills acquired, have been implemented in the curriculum of our schools to improve school coexistence. In addition, the expert teachers in PD methodology are training the rest of the teachers who wish to do so from their institution and their locality. All final products are available through the web, European erasmus platforms, etwinning. Internally, the results of the Project have been published in the school’s blog, web site, curriculumen and the oficial documents of our schools. Externally, the results and experiences acquired with the project are being disseminated through workshops and seminars in our schools. The website and the products are free to use for interested people. Products are posted or access links placed on websites,blogs etwinning,.. Finally, this project has been very useful because: • Increased the child's sense of equity and the development of a feeling of empathy • Increased self-esteem in students • Recognized that the difference enriches us and is positive • The project involved not only the students, but the family, adults ... working together the different values worked on the Project.