Posts made by EMINA043e019d70

@Antonia
Thank you for your very thorough consideration of my problem as well as the helpful advice. I really appreciate it

@Ana_moderator said in TEST What is your classroom management style?:

laissez-faire

My style is authoritative with a slight tendency to laissez-faire True

@Bilim
I'm very grateful for all the understanding and support I got here from like-minded people. And as for the "seize the day" philosophy, it's no coincidence that my favourite movie (and inspiration) of all time is "Dead poets society"

@Samreen-Tahir
Thank you for sharing your point of you. I wouldn't say that children should be non-political part of the society. It's true that we are not supposed to talk about politicians and parties at school but children should certainly be allowed to freely express their opinion about the current situation in the country and criticize all bad phenomena in it. They have a right to "raise their voice" against the things that bother them. That's a kind of "politics" I'm talking about. Critical thinking naturally leads to concrete actions.

@BRYANb8875625e5
Thank you very much for your encouragement, I really appreciate it. As for the "like-minded allies and engaging with the community", here's a link to a video about a project I've just done with a colleague of mine and our students, that is intended to fight against mental and verbal bullying in our schools. The video is in Serbian, but you can feel the zest and enthusiasm of the project participants, both students and teachers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrR2QmJJssw

@Bousl2336873cb4
I totally agree, but the biggest problem IS that lack of "administrative support" so everything comes down to individual initiative. That is sometimes tiring but I am not the one who gives up.
Best regards from Serbia

@Housna
Thank you very much for understanding and encouragement. It's definitely a matter of constant, everyday work, not giving up, believing in higher goals, and above all, loving your job. That's more or less how I see it.

Despite the existence of anti-bullying strategies and procedures, bullying in my school, as well as in the whole country, is increasing every year. The cause of this is partially the bad situation in the country, where violence is generated daily in public life but also general alienation of people, their lack of empathy due to social networks and online communication, which is the world trend. It is very hard to fight this problem locally, especially when higher instances are not doing their job.
To tackle this problem, this school year a colleague from a neighboring school and I organized a joint project with our students. The project was done according to Design for Change methodology. The students concluded that the biggest problem of their school community was mental and verbal bullying. After a lot of workshops on the topic, public opinion polls, analysis and filtering of ideas, we created a motivational obstacle course called CHOOSE THE RIGHT PATH. The course consists of a dozen fun physical obstacles combined with problem situations (moral issues) that the participants solve while crossing the stages of the course. The topics of moral issues refer to verbal and mental violence that children encounter in everyday school life, and for each situation they are offered answers. The goal of the course is not competition, but overcoming physical and metaphorical obstacles and learning along the way, choosing the right path in life and treating other people with respect.
The course has already been held twice and the project has become a part of the official school documents of both schools which means it's meant to be long-term. This is our "modest" and creative way to deal with bullying in our educational establishment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrR2QmJJssw
This link takes you to the summary of our creative process and the phases we went through while building our obstacle course that we're proud of.

Hello, I work as an English teacher in a Belgrade primary school. I can proudly say that I am one of the most enthusiastic and diligent teachers in my school. The problem that has bothered me for a long time now is- what do you do when your school authorities as well as the majority of your fellow teachers have no vision and don't support you in your enthusiasm, introducing novelties and progressive ideas into the school life, when you start feeling suffocated with general lethargy and even obstruction of your work (for political or whatever reasons) by others...Let me elaborate "political reasons"- in a non-democratic country such as Serbia any kind of criticism of state policy or bad phenomena in society( eg. poverty, violence, pollution...) is considered a threat, therefore critical thinking and engagement of anyone, even primary school students, is unwelcome...It's a kind of self-censorship in educational system..