STOP BULLYING USING DRAMA

STOP BULLYING IN SCHOOLS USING DRAMA AND CREATE A MORE PEACEFUL ATMOSPHERE

Course Duration: 5 days
Course Fee: 400€

This course is a kind of teacher training course which aims to support school staffs with the understanding of the reasons underneath the bullying at schools, ways of creating a more peaceful atmosphere to enhance more prosperous learning and teaching process.
There is new concern about school violence, and police have assumed greater responsibility for helping school officials ensure students' safety.
Perhaps more than any other school safety problem, bullying affects students' sense of security. The most effective ways to prevent or lessen bullying require school administrators' commitment and intensive effort; police interested in increasing school safety can use their influence to encourage schools to address the problem.
Bullying is widespread and perhaps the most underreported safety problem at schools in Europe and in the World as a whole. Contrary to popular belief, bullying occurs more often at school than on the way to and from there. Once thought of as simply a rite of passage or relatively harmless behavior that helps build young people's character, bullying is now known to have long-lasting harmful effects, for both the victim and the bully. Bullying is often mistakenly viewed as a narrow range of antisocial behavior confined to elementary school recess yards.
International research suggests that bullying is common at schools and occurs beyond elementary school; bullying occurs at all grade levels, although most frequently during elementary school. It occurs slightly less often in middle schools, and less so, but still frequently, in high schools. High school freshmen are particularly vulnerable.
Dan Olweus, a researcher in Norway, conducted groundbreaking research in the 1970s exposing the widespread nature and harm of school bullying. Bullying is well documented in Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, providing an extensive body of information on the problem. Research from some countries has shown that, without intervention, bullies are much more likely to develop a criminal record than their peers, and bullying victims suffer psychological harm long after the bullying stops.
Drama is not as concerned with the learning of theatre-skills, or production, as it is with the construction of imagined experience. Drama creates dramatic situations to be explored by the participants, inviting them to find out more about the process of how the situation comes into being, to shift perspectives in the here and now, identify and sometimes solve problems and deepen our understanding of them. Drama in education reflects a shift from an over-emphasis on informational content to a more balanced inclusion of attention to the processing of ideas.

Learning Outcomes
All the participants will
- Understand the terms of bullying in schools
- Create empathy-based stories
- Get benefits of using drama to prevent peer bullying
- Create drama groups and evaluate them
- Recognize bullying behavior
- Get aware of related problems
- Define the role of drama in education
- Identify the incidents and consequences of bullying
- Get an awareness related to the chronic victims of bullying
- Work on models for dramatic action
- Clarify the advantages of using drama as a method of education
- Develop a school policy plan on preventing bullying at schools
- Introduce pedagogical approaches to deal with the victims of bullying as well as attackers
- Develop positive attitudes towards

Objectives of the course
- Getting familiar with the concepts of drama and bullying
- Identifying the type of bullying
- Discussing the effects of bullying
- Focusing on the problems caused by being bullying at schools
- Analyzing pedagogical approaches to deal with the victims of bullying

Methodology
- Focusing on practical skills-based interactive learning
- Creating immediate feedbacks, hands-on activities, and inspiring discussions on best practices
- Working in a group cooperatively
- Brainstorming

Target group
- Teachers, trainers, educators, school administrators, etc.

Preparation
Before the course,
- A detailed pre-course questionnaire to indicate their level of experience, teaching backgrounds, and training will be completed by participants.
- They will also prepare a presentation to reflect their own teaching method.

Validation
- A course participation certificate will be given to all participants.
- A Europass Mobility Certificate will be given if the participant demands it, as well.