Address: Piazza Sicilia, 2, Milano

Country: Italy

 School website

Project: “Giù la maschera!” (Drop the mask! )

Working language during the project:

• Italian
• English
   

Themes of the Council of Europe campaign “FREE to SPEAK, SAFE to LEARN - Democratic Schools for All” covered:

• Preventing violence and bullying
• Improving well-being at school
   

Competences from the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (CDC) addressed and where / how they were integrated:

• Conflict-resolution skills
  Learning how to manage interpersonal relationships in a conflict situation by using empathy, so to prevent bullying
• Civic-mindedness
  Promoting awareness of one’s own behavioural impact on others and on the social environment
• Knowledge and critical understanding of the self
  Developing self-consciousness for respecting social contexts as well as improving well-being
   

Target group age range:

• 5 - 11
• 11 - 15
   

Level of education:

• Primary education
• Lower secondary education
   

Short description of the project:

Our school banner is about developing emotional, social and an inquiring mind in our students thanks to: inclusion and educational success; wellness and health; music and theatre universal language; technology and innovation.

Our project focuses on different parts, depending on the students’ age.

At primary school, an activity about bullying prevention and positive emotions promotion is carried out, by using: 1) a metaphorical fairy-tale whose protagonists are vegetables representing different behaviours for managing conflict, 2) role-playing, 3) drawings and comics produced by the children in order to combat bullying.

At secondary school, several didactic activities are carried out, so to make teenagers more aware and self-confident, finding in their educational paths clues as to how to develop a sense of respect for society, responsibility and the will to participate: 1) an educational activity on how to save and include migrants and refugees (organising their everyday life, and so on); 2) theatre, choir and orchestra activities as a chance to put into practice the need to find a respectful harmony and mediation among others and with oneself; 3) building a set of 10 commandments for web-threats and web-opportunities (a sort of “internet policy”), so as to guide students to a more mindful way of communicating by ICT, even using peer-to-peer tutoring. We have the chance of collaborating with the Police, social-help associations and other stakeholders.

In both schools, we enhance well-being and cooperation thanks to a project on “Digital Citizenship Competences”, collaborating with the Catholic University in Milan as well as the Regional Education Office for Lombardy.

As George Siemens (the “father” of Connectivism, University of Manitoba, Canada) said: “It’s the change underlying these tools that I’m trying to emphasize. Forget blogs…think open dialogue. Forget wikis…think collaboration. Forget podcasts…think democracy of voice. Forget RSS/aggregation…think personal networks. Forget any of the tools…and think instead of the fundamental restructuring of how knowledge is created, disseminated, shared, and validated.”

Aims/objectives

• Preventing bullying and discrimination
• Improving well-being at school and nonviolent communication
• Building a democratic school aiming at developing cognitive, emotional, social skills

Expected results/outcomes

• Reducing the number of conflict episodes
• Improving the number of co-operation episodes

Changes

• Creating awareness in interpersonal communication (face-to-face, ICT-based…)
   

Challenges you faced

• Managing a “liquid modernity”, that is matched with cyber-dangers
   

Time-frame of the project:

The academic year (October 2019-May 2020)
 

Council of Europe materials on citizenship and human rights education used while preparing or implementing your practice:

• Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture
• Bookmarks
• Multimedia Material (ex. video “Beat Bullying”, series of cartoons “Democracy and Human Rights at School”, video “Corporal punishment at school: how two parents decided to change things”)
• MOOC about prevention of cyber-stupidity, edited by Catholic University of Milan; conferences organized by MIUR (Italian Ministry for Education) and other associations about promoting well-being at school and human rights knowledge and literacy.