on the move Creating educational spaces for empowerment Giorgos - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Mental Health Conference “From Managing emergencies to Sustaining Reforms” Athens, “Alkis Argyriadis” Hall 3-4.06.2019

Bridging the gap for people

• n the move

Creating educational spaces for empowerment Giorgos Simopoulos

Mental Health Conference “From Managing emergencies to Sustaining Reforms” Athens, “Alkis Argyriadis” Hall 3-4.06.2019

Refugee Education – the field

• Initial phase:
• non formal education – the transit discourse

Various Organizations offering support programs targeting a population on the move

• Combining NFE - PSS – SEL actions
• Programs focused on integration designed after the closure of the

Balkan Route.

Mental Health Conference “From Managing emergencies to Sustaining Reforms” Athens, “Alkis Argyriadis” Hall 3-4.06.2019

Dealing with educational aliens

Dominant perception according to which refugee students:

• are a group homogenously multi-traumatized
• are different compared with any other student-group (including

migrant students)

• are not able and do not want to integrate
• are characterized by a significant higher percentage of learning

difficulties

Mental Health Conference “From Managing emergencies to Sustaining Reforms” Athens, “Alkis Argyriadis” Hall 3-4.06.2019

… and the educational approaches

• They need a kind of special (humanitarian-pampering) educational

treatment based on low demand and expectations actions

• They cannot be integrated on the existing mainstream formal

education structures – such an integration could increase levels of anxiety and dysphoria

• They need pre-integration schemes

FOCUS ON A SOLID-STEREOTYPIC VULNERABILITY VS INVESTING ON RESILLIENCE AND POTENCIAL

Mental Health Conference “From Managing emergencies to Sustaining Reforms” Athens, “Alkis Argyriadis” Hall 3-4.06.2019

EMPOWERMENT

• Investing on resilience
• Focus on students’ strengths and life-skills as enrichment elements
• Developing community building (parents, schools, see

Interpretation4Schools)

• Promoting the value of multilingualism and translanguaging

IDENTITY BALANCE REINFORCMENT AND MUTUAL ENRICHING INTERGACTION

Mental Health Conference “From Managing emergencies to Sustaining Reforms” Athens, “Alkis Argyriadis” Hall 3-4.06.2019

Normality as Empowerment

• Aim: transition to situations that look like a normal life
• Need to create bridges between learning, life-skills, social-emotional

goals AVOIDING FRAGMENTATION

• Safe, inclusive educational spaces that acknowledge and empower

diverse identities

• FE and NFE Educators professional development as a non only know-

how issue but related with deeper reflection and intercultural competence development

Mental Health Conference “From Managing emergencies to Sustaining Reforms” Athens, “Alkis Argyriadis” Hall 3-4.06.2019

Highlights

• During History Class the teachers tells me to use my mobile phone and find

something to do… as I don’t understand anything… It is not nice at all… (boy from Afghanistan, 14 years old)

• I wouldn’t like to be in this afternoon school where my friends are enrolled.

Only children from Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. I want to be in the school I am registered now… This is school, the other not. Here I learn something, there I can see from my friends, they didn’t learn anything, it was just a parking, coming and going. So, after one month they stopped (girl form Iran, 15 years old)

• The school in Afghanistan was during morning – afternoon is not for school,

if you need to learn you have to go morning (boy from Afghanistan, 12 years old)

Mental Health Conference “From Managing emergencies to Sustaining Reforms” Athens, “Alkis Argyriadis” Hall 3-4.06.2019

Highlights

• We were implementing a Refugee Education Reception Facility after 2 pm,

with 58 students, that could be enrolled on the morning program and some

• f them there were finally enrolled. When somebody was coming from

RERF to the morning school, there was a tremendous transformation of

• behavior. Because they felt that the afternoon school is not a real school, in

is something inferior, so they underestimated it and they were nervous,

• ffensive… And when they were coming to the morning school, they started

behaving like an average student. Because learning is a social process: when you are in a framework where everybody follows the same routines, you are also going to follow them (teacher)

Mental Health Conference “From Managing emergencies to Sustaining Reforms” Athens, “Alkis Argyriadis” Hall 3-4.06.2019

Highlights

• This experience transformed me as a human. I can see life on a

different perspective, I escape from my small anxieties… (teacher)

• And now I am looking on another way Education for all, not only for

these children… That we need, as educators, to focus on future… it is not a case of everyday management, it has to do with students’ well- being (teacher)