Kaunas Education Innovation Centre staff 2023 22-25 May attended an international project meeting in Le Mans, France, during the last mobility visit of the Erasmus+ project “Fight Against Bullying at School”. During the visit, project partners from Spain, Italy, France, Belgium and Lithuania learnt about the problem of bullying and its solutions, as well as about prevention programmes in France, shared valuable experience, and learnt about and practically tested the methods used to prevent bullying and create a safe learning environment.
During the visit, the project participants visited Le Mans Touchard-Washington Secondary School, where the school team presented the school’s activities and shared their experience in reducing bullying. The school strives to provide quality teaching and a safe learning environment for all pupils from the age of 15. up to 25 m. age students. It emphasises not only academic knowledge, but also personal development, social integration and empathy. In addition to traditional academics, Touchard-Washington School focuses on each student’s emotional state and well-being at school. Bullying prevention at school is carried out by promoting peer-to-peer communication, using educational games as a tool to encourage the most open and close communication and to get to know each other. This method is very important to develop students’ self-expression through emotion, to encourage them not to be afraid to show how they feel, not to be afraid to compliment each other, and to learn how to accept a compliment from another.
Participants were also introduced to cases of cyberbullying among young people on particularly popular social platforms (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat). The analysis of cyberbullying cases sought to find solutions to reduce cyberbullying and the impact of cyberbullying on students.
During the mobility, participants had the opportunity to get to know and ask pertinent questions to the Positive Behavioural Mediation Team set up at Leon Tolstoy Secondary School, which is made up of students and teachers. Interestingly, every new pupil who enters the school goes through this training. During the two-day training, students try to get to know not only themselves, but also others, learn to talk about emotions, needs, cooperation, communication, empathy, and conflict resolution. Students act as mediators: they prevent bullying, take measures to resolve conflicts, talk to both sides, the victim and the aggressor, and make all students feel safe at school, free from tension and respectful of other people’s opinions. The secondary school works with pupils aged 11-15. Student mediators are trained to have a conversation, see the problem, provide help, react to information, listen, and maintain confidentiality. If the conflict still cannot be resolved, the teaching team gets involved. With immense responsibility, pupils realise that the knowledge they have acquired will be useful in the future.
The project aims to implement initiatives to reduce bullying and ensure a safe learning environment, to discuss measures, analyse methods to effectively combat bullying in schools, to test and share the valuable experience of the partner countries on the topic of bullying, and to apply the accumulated knowledge and experience to schools in our own countries, and to share the good practice with schools in Kaunas.
Gabija Lapinskaitė, Methodologist, Kaunas Education Innovation Centre
Diana Bulanovienė, Methodologist, Kaunas Education Innovation Centre
