In its project, the United Boarding School is connecting school organizations and cultural -artistic institutions with a commercial company that will allow them to export common outputs to online space via ICT. Helping pupils with special needs to access educational content will help to mitigate the negative impact of the Covid19 pandemic on their future because most of them come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. The partnership consists of the following institutions: • United Boarding School Vranov nad Topľou, Slovak Republic • Private School of Art Industry, Košice, Slovak Republic • Euroinstitut Prague, Czech Republic • Puppet Theater Košice, Slovak Republic • 7mérföld a Közösségért Közhasznú Nonprofit Kft. Nagykanizsa, Hungary • Auvid media, s.r.o Košice, Slovak Republic The target group of the project are students of participating schools, students of other schools with special needs and vocational schools aged 14-26 alongside with pedagogical and professional staff of schools with special needs and vocational schools as well as parents of children with disabilities. The main objectives of the project are: • To innovate the curricula of Ethical and Family Education within the Year 9 of Primary School with special needs and the Year 1,2 and 3 of the Vocational School. • Create a Methodical Handbook, “Tutorials in the Educational Process of Schools with special needs”. • Create Internet television “Therapist TV”. • To link, by network, educational and cultural - artistic institutions that will be co - creators of innovated curricula, methodological manuals, content of Internet television - tutorials with etudes, and thus qualitatively move their work to a higher level in the field of drama education, drama and theater therapy. Teachers chose artists - puppeteers from Košice (SK) and Nagykanizsa (HU) due to the puppet theater universality to both verbal and nonverbal manifestation. The model of using this artistic language is the closest to the target group of children and young people with disabilities. Nonverbal processing of the theater can be applied and fully taken over even in countries with a language barrier. Thanks to the audiovisual processing of puppet theater, it will be possible to spread it not only at the local and regional level, but also at the international level thanks to the use of pantomime and non-verbal techniques. The need and way of creating an innovative curriculum of Ethical and Family Education and a methodological manual has required quality and proven partners who will pass years of experience onto each other in term of creating and using video tutorials, creating and commissioning Internet television and implementing drama therapy, theatrotherapy and treatment methods into the educational process of people with disabilities. The result of the project partners' efforts will be to make these target groups more attractive and simplify their access to learning materials. Last but not least to enrich them with knowledge and experience that will lead to improved attendance, reduced percentage of premature termination of Education and improved quality of their lives. It will bring them closer to overall social inclusion.
We wanted to get closer to them, get them after we were separated, gradually get them back into the cycle of responsibilities and school regime, improve school attendance, show them that school wants to solve their problems in love, in relationships with parents and peers, we want to prevent bullying, but also to show them how to spend their free time meaningfully. In addition, we wanted to cooperate with professional actors and companies, to create works together with them, to transform them in our image, to work with their help with our children, to be inspired by their professionalism and to move forward qualitatively. We wanted to create a methodical manual at a qualitatively higher level than in the past from other projects and transfer it to teachers to use experiential methods. We wanted to experience collaboration on its creation with a foreign partner, to be inspired by their methods and approaches and to exchange them with each other. We wanted to achieve better attendance, prevent bullying at school and reach higher numbers of apprentices with a teaching certificate.
There was Isolation during the covid period which revealed problems that even our children did not avoid. There are the children with mental disadvantages, roma children and children from marginal roma communities at our school. It was separation from friends, teachers and the school environment, which for most of them means the only clean and cultural place in their lives and the only escape from the morass of socially weak families and marginalized groups in which they grow up. The admitted project was for getting the attention of our children in a playful way, to start targeted communication with them on topics of everyday life that they cannot discuss with their parents. We have chosen subjects - ethical and family education, where these topics are found and where there is room for the application of experiential methods such as dramatic ones. We wanted to get closer to them, win them over, improve attendance at school, show them that school can provide them with space for development, for solving their problems, but also for spending free time. Ultimately, with the project, we wanted to increase the number of OU graduates with a teaching certificate, maintain the number of apprentices at the school, and at the same time maintain employment in it.