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How to make your students take responsibility – A handbook Introduction: background idea and conceptsStudents face many different kinds of responsibility during the school day. It ranges from listening to the teacher, working efficiently individually and in groups, being a good friend and classmate and keeping the school and grounds tidy after use. Not all students take all of these responsibilities automatically – you might even say that most don’t. So how do we make it attractive for the students to live up to all these responsibilities? One solution is control; rewards and penalties for good and bad behaviour. We believe there is a better way – a way where the teachers will not have to take charge and where the students themselves will be motivated. 354330012446000Here’s a little thought experiment. When do you take or live up to responsibility? We came to the conclusion, that we are most passionate, relentless and consistent in our responsibilities when: We can see and understand the reason behind certain rules and regulations (such as keeping the bathrooms clean after use, because otherwise they will quickly become gross)We have initiated something ourselves The saying goes “you cannot have responsibility if you don’t take responsibility”. Therefor we want to give the responsibility to the students.What’s the worst that could happen? Chaos? Anarchy? Well if it should go that wrong, then hopefully the students would be able to see the reason for having different social and organizational rules and regulations in school. On the other hand the best outcome could be students helping each other, playing nicely and sharing with each other, students making the school more “green”, tidy and clean school areas, teachers enjoying their break in the lounge, not having to look after the children and many other initiatives. Choosing the area of responsibility-5080058864500We teachers probably see a lot of problems around the school that we would wish the students would take care of, such as keeping the classrooms and hallways tidy, including all classmates in the games and fun during break time and so on. But if we really want the students to live up to certain responsibilities, it needs to come from something they are concerned about. The students must feel ownership of what goes on in school, if they are to uphold the rules. Therefor it’s important to let the students find and select a problem, so that they will find it relevant and interesting. How we can do this? You can read that in the following text. Campaigning 42449751968500We are suggesting campaigning as a way of tackling different problems around school. It’s a great way of working with a problem, because the students will become the advocates of the solution. The students will hopefully uphold their own solution and try to make the other students around school do the same, and we think that that will have a much better chance of surviving than any teacher/leader given solution. How can you start this campaign? You can always find your own way of making a campaign or finding another solution to the problem, but if you don’t, then you might want to check on the rest of this manual! The steps we take in the rest of the manual can also be used for any kind of problem. We also don’t know the specific outcome of these steps, because we want the students to find out things for themselves. But we do give you an idea in which direction you might want to go with the students if we’re talking about hygiene (since that is what we saw at school that the students disliked and what we want to work on). What can you find in this manual?Steps of how to work out this project/campaign.centerbottom00Link to the video you can use as an introduction to the projectDiscuss with the students from your class (7th grade or higher)13335131826000You can start the campaign very simple by just talking to your students and let them figure out what seems to be the problem. You can start this conversation by giving them some time to think about what they think is wrong or not good enough at your school. This might be hygiene, but it could also be something completely different! It’s also possible to adjust this part and tell them that they have to think about hygiene at school. Let them think about their own experiences of hygiene and start talking to them about it. You might want to consider a visit with your class to the toilets of the school. Maybe even make a comparison between the students’ toilets and the teachers’ toilets (why are the teachers’ toilets way cleaner than the toilets used by the students)? Then you could use a brainstorm on the blackboard and let them write down their ideas about hygiene at school. These can be ideas to solve the problem, examples given of how the hygiene is at school and maybe even the cause why the hygiene isn’t good in the school (and why the students don’t want to go to the bathroom at school). After this brainstorm, talk to them. Get to know how they feel about the hygiene at school. Try to figure out why they think the hygiene at school is bad (and especially in the toilets). Find out why students don’t want to go to the bathroom. As soon as you get the feeling that everyone had their chance to talk about it and that you know how the situation is, go to the next step. Try to find the reason why the toilets aren’t so hygienic. Or if you already found the reason, try to state it in a few sentences. One of the reasons (we believe) that might be the cause of the unhygienic toilets, are the students themselves. If the students don’t take care of the toilets (as in cleaning up after using the toilet, etc.), then what’s the point in people cleaning them every time? What if the students don’t take responsibility for it? Or what if they can’t take responsibility, because they don’t get the responsibility? This is where we come to our next step; students taking responsibility by us giving them responsibility. Hand over responsibility to the students After we found out what the problem seems to be with the hygiene at school, we are going to take the next step. You can choose if you want to let them find ideas for themselves that they can work out. Or you can give them a basic idea with which they can work to solve the problem. We already have a basic idea you can hand over to the students and let them start working with it. But before we start with that, we tell them that there is going to be a competition between the different groups and that there are different prices to be won (price for best prepared group, price for the best invented product, price for the most motivated group, price for best idea, price for …). These prices will be handed out to the groups at the end of the project (and at the time they have to present it to the entire school and/or to parents, teachers…). We hope that these prices they can win, will give them a motivation boost! We don’t want to give anyone a bad feeling, so that’s why we will make sure that every team gets a price for something! You tell them this first before going further with your explanation. You start with handing them the idea of “teaching” younger pupils about hygiene in the toilets. This is not teaching like the teacher does (we wouldn’t even want that). It’s better if it’s a project they work out together and that they can present to the rest of the school and where they see the results of it in the next few months as well! (Posters, advertisements, invented products ...) When students from 7th grade or higher “teach” about hygiene to the younger ones or at least work out a project with them around hygiene, then these adolescents will learn more about hygiene as well! So it will cause a great effect on young as older students! You can inspire and motivate them a bit with this video: you handed them the idea of working out a project with the younger pupils. Divide your class group in several smaller groups. It’s possible to keep the entire class at the same idea, but we can’t make a campaign if there is only one group. So we suggest that you make groups. Let each group think about the things they want to teach the younger ones; what are the things that young children have to know about hygiene? (Washing hands in a correct way, using soap, how to use the toilet in a proper way … These are some possible answers to this question.) And how are you (students from 7th grade and higher) going to work this out with the younger children? What do you want to work out with the younger children in your project? As soon as each group of students have an answer on these two questions, we can march on to the next step. These answers don’t have to be too specific; there has to be some room for changes or other possibilities that may occur. We believe this idea to be effective and manageable because:Students are used to working in groups and this is no different. They will also work in groups to find a good solution for it. Students and pupils from different grades in the entire school will be involved in this project of hygiene, so they can find a solution themselves and so we hope that they get the feeling that it is their own and that they care about, so that they will take better care of it. Preparation for the project450024570929500Every group has found an answer to the two questions and will start to prepare for their project. If it’s required to do more research or work out the way of how the students want to work out the project, then they can do it in this step. You (the teacher) can guide the process of the students and help them out if they are experiencing problems. This step can take some time or take only 30 minutes; it all depends on how quick the students work and how fast you want them to work. We suggest giving them enough time to let them work out a basic idea, but not enough time to work out the entire project; they still must be open for other ideas and solutions from the younger students. Students and pupils work out their project about hygieneAfter the required preparations have been made, it’s time for the students to work out their project with younger pupils. You can choose if each group has to work with an entire class or with a mix of pupils from different classes or … You can decide all of this by yourself or decide this together with your students; they might need a certain amount of pupils to work out their project as well. So input from the students is always welcome! 114308699500The students from your class are working with the pupils from younger years. You and the teachers from the other classes will always be around, checking on them and answering questions that the students might have. The teachers will take the roles of moderators; you know that he/she is there, but the moderator only takes action when required. Only if the students have questions or if the teacher sees something going terribly wrong (as in risks of danger …) will be the only times that the teacher will take action. The teacher won’t take action if he sees that the group is going the wrong way; the students have to figure it out themselves how to solve it. Testing period and making adjustments46062906096000When the project is more or less over, then the students with their group will receive a testing period. They can figure out if they still need to make adjustments and try to figure out what other students think about it. This testing period can last for a day, but can also be stretched out to a week so that they can present it everywhere and let everyone try out their method, product and so on. They gather comments from as much students as they want (and maybe even add comments from teachers and principal) and try to use these comments to improve their project’s result. After the adjustments are made, it’s ready for one of the last steps. Presenting the resultsThe students have made their adjustments/improvements, so now it’s time to present it to the entire school. They can choose themselves how they want to present their result; they do need to get some time for this from the teachers. After the presentations, a jury consisting of both students as teachers (and maybe some other personnel or parents as well) will decide which group gets which price. At the end of the day or at the end of the week, the entire school will know who won which price and what is going to happen with the results of the project. We suggest that all of the projects can be used in the school or that at least a poster of their project can be put on the wall if the result wasn’t possible to practice in the school. So at least something for every group so that every group can be recognized! Well, this is it! This is our manual, or at least the first prototype of our manual!What do you think of it?Created by: Astrid Elme BreumMathias Van den BosscheRachel KeoghSally Maan Dankar ................
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