If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.
You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

Unit 3: Beyond the Classroom

Page history last edited by knc190@... 13 years, 3 months ago

How do Child-Friendly Schools affect/change communities?

How do Child-Friendly Schools do this specifically in post-conflict societies?
How do Child-Friendly Schools create community ownership or parental involvement of the school?
How do Child-Friendly Schools help create future community leaders?
How do Child-Friendly Schools promote peaceful cohabitation?

How can communities support or work with Child-Friendly Schools?

How can parents support or work with Child-Friendly Schools
How can community organizations support and work with Child-Friendly Schools?
How can NGOs support and work with Child-Friendly Schools?
How can local health facilities support and work with Child-Friendly Schools?
Can Child-Friendly Schools help create Child-Friendly Communities (open spaces, green spaces, free spaces)? How? What are Child-Friendly Communities?

All social systems and agencies which affect children should be based on the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (p. 3).

How do Child-Friendly Schools affect/change communities?

How do Child-Friendly Schools do this specifically in post-conflict societies?

In Bangladesh, for example, the benefits of inclusive education had not reached all marginalized groups uniformly, with those who remained ignored being children from ethnic and linguistic minorities, children of ‘bede’ (boat gypsies), street children, children with social stigma, working children, and children who were physically and intellectually challenged. It would be an important task to analyze why education was not reaching them, but it is another to identify single targeted strategies for each of those ‘groups,’ as many intersect (p. 15).

Examples of promising strategies and practices in child-seeking schools would be:

· Monitoring systems to identify which schools are affected by an emergency, and visiting children in shelters to check they are all right, and again encouraging them to return. Children themselves becoming monitors and encouraging others to return.
· Using the emergency as an opportunity to register children, especially girls. PLAN in Nepal has a program for children called “Write me down, make me real.”
· Outreach work, such as the ‘street educators’ and ‘street schools’ for street children around the world (p. 16).

It should be ensured that children’s routes to and from a school are secure. Children must not be put in greater physical danger by attending school than by staying at home … If it is fond that this is a concern, the following strategies should be tried:

· Children arrange to use the buddy system, never walking alone
· Parent volunteers serve as escorts for groups of children
· Community organizes transportation for children from particular areas
· Satellite classrooms are set up in distant communities (p. 86).

Conversely, in Rwanda, the provision of a massive response to children and teachers and the school helped to mobilize the community emerging from genocide. This meant that restitution of habits, the reconstruction of community an a normalization of relational behaviors (p. 6).

In many field experiences, the emergency intervention has been useful for changing the frame of mind of governments towards the need off a more child-centered approach (p. 12).

How do Child-Friendly Schools create community ownership or parental involvement of the school?

At the community level, for school staff, parents, and other community members, the framework can serve as both a goal and a tool of quality improvement through localized self-assessment, planning, and management and as a means for mobilizing the community around education and child rights (p. 6).

Child-Friendly:

· Communities becoming more involved in management of the schools (India, Nepal) (p. 19).

Benefits for Parents

Through an ILFE, parents learn more about how their children are being educated. They become personally involved in an feel a greater sense of importance in helping their children to learn. As teachers, ask them for their opinions about children, parents who feel valued and consider themselves as equal partners in providing quality learning opportunities for children. Parents can also learn how to deal better with children at home by using techniques that the teachers use in school. They also learn to interact with others in the community, as well as to understand and help solve each others' problems. Most importantly, they know that their children - and ALL children, are receiving a quality education (p. 15).

Ongoing contact and communication with parents and community leaders is necessary in order to gain their confidence, to make sure ALL children are in school and learning to their fullest abilities, as well as to increase the community's sense of ownership and sharing of resources between the community and the school (p. 29).

Informing the community about ILFE

In addition to talking with parents, some teachers can work with the head

teacher and the schools’ I;FE team or coordinating committee to explain

the development of an I;FE to larger groups including community members.

If you are one of these persons, some of the ways you can explain I;FE

include the following.

1. Printed information. Prepare school brochures or newsletters to

give out. Invite journalists from the local newspaper to visit the

school and encourage the local press to write about ILFE. Show the

journalists the benefits of an ILFE school, and explain the school’s

plan to provide a quality education for all children.

2. Radio and TV Public Service Announcements where schools use

radio and television to show and tell parents about the need for

schooling their children.

3. Community or Group. Plan to hold one to three-day

workshops or training sessions. These sessions are helpful in

introducing the school to people who are new, especially for families

whose children are not attending school. The sessions can explain

the school’s mission to educate all children and can explain the

participatory, active learning environment of the school (p. 18 - 2.1).

How do Child-Friendly Schools help create future community leaders?

Benefits for Communities

An ILFE can offer many benefits to the community, too. The community develops a sense of pride as more children go to school and learn. They discover that more "community leaders of the future" are being prepared to participate actively in society. The community sees that potential social problems, such as petty crimes or adolescent problems, may be reduced. Community members become more involved in the school, creating better relations between the school and the community (p. 16).

How do Child-Friendly Schools promote peaceful cohabitation?

Learning to live together in today’s increasingly globalized world required competencies and values that will equip us all to live in extremely diverse cultural and linguistic contexts. As Lopez (2001) puts it: ‘such diversity is not only characteristic of societies that we formerly considered to be distant, but is rather part of our very own co-existence, since otherness and different now impregnate our homes due to the increasing predominance of new information technologies that constantly bring us into contact with worlds with different cultures and languages, and also due to the increasing population shifts of individuals from regions and countries from their own’. (p. 14).

“This implies that learning to live together in the twenty-first century should then start by recognizing these new situations and accepting our creative diversity (p. 14).

CFSs imply designing world class schools that inspire a love of learning and create a sense of harmony between the school, the surrounding community and the environment (p. 1).

Why should we involve communities?

Communities are the overall context in which children live and learn, and

in which they apply what we have taught them. The values and involvement

of families, community leaders, and other community members are vitally

important for getting all children in school and helping them to learn

successfully. For instance, if families and communities value the education

we give their children and value us, as teachers, as well, then children

will also value their opportunity to learn. It will encourage them to respect

us and their classmates—especially those with various backgrounds and

abilities—and encourage them to apply their learning in their daily lives.

How can communities support or work with Child-Friendly Schools?

How can parents support or work with Child-Friendly Schools?

An engaged parents’ committee co-manages the school and helps to ensure protection of the children (p. 2).

The ability of a school to be and to call itself child-friendly is directly linked to the support, participation and collaboration it receives from families (p. 3).

Who is "The Community?"

The community includes parents and guardians of our students, other members of their families, as well as neighbors near the school ... if the school is in an urban area, the community may be defined somewhat differently and include merchants, shop keepers, government workers, and others (p. 3 - 2.1).

Unfortunately, while involving the community is crucial for developing an IFLE, the reality is there is often distance between the school and the community (p. 3 - 2.1).

How can community organizations support and work with Child-Friendly Schools?

When rebuilding schools, communities should take on significant responsibility. If school committees are in place, they are the logical group to take on the project. Women and youth groups can also play a role. Responsibilities of the community can range from provision of labor, contribution of local materials, paying a one-off donation, feeding the workers, or management of the building site. The community should take on long-term responsibility for maintenance of the school and surrounding environment, as well as school security. Note, however, that a community’s involvement in a school is not exclusive to the building itself (p. 85).

How can NGOs support and work with Child-Friendly Schools?

Right to Play, an international NGO, promotes sports for development – central to the CFS model –in the school as part of its psychosocial support role (p. 2).

‘Child-seeking,’ firstly, relates to the problem of the invisibility of many vulnerable children … In this effort, people in the school and community, with the help of authorities or NGOs, try to establish who does not come to school, or who drops out, and why, and to recruit them by providing various forms of incentives (p. 16).

How can local health facilities support and work with Child-Friendly Schools?

Identify Needs

Identify existing resources in your school and community. List all supports and services required for children with various backgrounds and abilities. These may include government services, NGOs, health clinics, and private agencies (p. 32).

Can Child-Friendly Schools help create Child-Friendly Communities (open spaces, green spaces, free spaces)? How? What are Child-Friendly Communities?

Above all, a rights-based, child-friendly school must reflect an environment of good quality characterized by several essential aspects …. It is involved with children, families, and communities – it is:

· Child-centered – promoting child participation in all aspects of school life.
· Family-focused – working to strengthen families as the child’s primary caregivers and educators and helping children, parents, and teachers establish harmonious relationships.
· Community-based – encouraging local partnership in education, acting in the community for the sake of children, and working with other actors to ensure fulfillment of children’s rights (p. 3-4).

Children today spend much more time than previous generations being looked after by their parents (p. 136).

The loss of everyday outdoor activity is arguably the single greatest cause of the growth in childhood obesity, with far fewer children today than previous generations spending time playing out of doors and getting around their neighborhoods under their own steam (p. 137).

Outdoor activities can have wider health benefits. For instance, controlled studies in the United States have shown that regular contact with outdoor spaces reduces the symptoms of attention deficit disorder in children, and that the greener the space, te bigger the beneficial effect (p. 137).

There are risks to children in insulating them and not letting them develop their own coping mechanisms, or do things their own way (p. 137).

The space-orientates response is also interventionist, but its interventions are indirect as well as direct. Alongside services, it aims to offer children the opportunity to grow and adapt through their own experiences: at home, at school and in the wider community. This approach embraces as a policy goal the creation of child-friendly communities, and by implications aims its interventions at all children, not merely those defined as in need or at risk. It takes an optimistic view of children’s ability to shape their lives, viewing them as able to learn through their own efforts without always needing direction or oversight (138).

A space-oriented response to children’s well-being would place a strong emphasis on easy access to welcoming, accessible parks, squares and public spaces. It would encourage child modes of transport like walking, cycling and public transport over the car. Barriers places around children’s institutions like the school would be less rigid and more permeable allowing, for example for school playgrounds to be freely available to use when the school day finished (p. 139).

A space-oriented approach would also give strong support to local voluntary and community activities that give children a degree of autonomy and responsibility, and that bring together children and adults (p. 139).

The community as a whole, in addition to student groups, often uses recreation areas near schools (p. 97).

Communities also offer a wealth of information and practical

knowledge that we can use to improve our teaching and promote children’s

learning. For instance, we can incorporate traditional stories or songs into

our language lessons, or use different techniques for growing local plants

or raising animals in our science lessons (p. 4 - 2.1).

ORIGINAL NOTES AND CITATIONS:

Aglo, J. & Mankolo, L. (2001). Curriculum development and education for living together: Conceptual and managerial challenges in Africa. Final report of the seminar held in Nairobi, Kenya, June 25-29, 2001. International Bureau of Education, Geneva; The Kenya National Commission for UNESCO, the UNESCO Nairobi Office.

“This implies that learning to live together in the twenty-first century should then start by recognizing these new situations and accepting our creative diversity (p. 14).

Orkodashvili, M. (2010). Quality education through Child-Friendly Schools: Resource allocation for the protection of children’s rights (?)

CFSs imply designing world class schools that inspire a love of learning and create a sense of harmony between the school, the surrounding community and the environment (p. 1).

An engaged parents’ committee co-manages the school and helps to ensure protection of the children (p. 2).

Right to Play, an international NGO, promotes sports for development – central to the CFS model –in the school as part of its psychosocial support role (p. 2).

The ability of a school to be and to call itself child-friendly is directly linked to the support, participation and collaboration it receives from families (p. 3).

All social systems and agencies which affect children should be based on the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (p. 3).

· Child-centered – promoting child participation in all aspects of school life.
· Family-focused – working to strengthen families as the child’s primary caregivers and educators and helping children, parents, and teachers establish harmonious relationships.
· Community-based – encouraging local partnership in education, acting in the community for the sake of children, and working with other actors to ensure fulfillment of children’s rights (p. 3-4).

UNICEF (year). Education in Emergencies in South Asia: Reducing the risks facing vulnerable children (blue cover, get from Somalia).

Examples of promising strategies and practices in child-seeking schools would be:

· Monitoring systems to identify which schools are affected by an emergency, and visiting children in shelters to check they are all right, and again encouraging them to return. Children themselves becoming monitors and encouraging others to return.
· Using the emergency as an opportunity to register children, especially girls. PLAN in Nepal has a program for children called “Write me down, make me real.”
· Outreach work, such as the ‘street educators’ and ‘street schools’ for street children around the world (p. 16).

Child-Friendly:

· Communities becoming more involved in management of the schools (India, Nepal) (p. 19).

Gill, T. (2008). Space-oriented children’s policy: Creating child-friendly communities to improve children’s well-being, Children & Society, 22, 136-142.

Children today spend much more time than previous generations being looked after by their parents (p. 136).

There are risks to children in insulating them and not letting them develop their own coping mechanisms, or do things their own way (p. 137).

Sriprakash, A. (2010). Child-centered education and the promise of democratic learning: Pedagogic messages in rural Indian primary schools, International Journal of Education, 30, 297-304.

Nikolai, S. (2003). Education in emergencies: A tool kit for starting … Save the Children (from Somalia).

· Children arrange to use the buddy system, never walking alone
· Parent volunteers serve as escorts for groups of children
· Community organizes transportation for children from particular areas
· Satellite classrooms are set up in distant communities (p. 86).

The community as a whole, in addition to student groups, often uses recreation areas near schools (p. 97).

Aguilar, P. & Retamal, G. (2009). Protective environments and quality education in humanitarian contexts, International Journal of Educational Development, 29, 3-16.

In many field experiences, the emergency intervention has been useful for changing the frame of mind of governments towards the need off a more child-centered approach (p. 12).

Kendall, N. (2007). Parental and community participation in improving educational quality in Africa: Current practices and future possibilities, International Review of Education, 53, 701-708.

UNESCO (Year). Embracing diversity: Toolkit for creating inclusive, learning-friendly environments.