1. TUDOR ARGHEZI THEORETICAL HIGHSCHOOL,
CRAIOVA, DOLJ
2st Newsletter of the Grundtvig Partnership
“NO MORE TEARS” 2010-2012
YEAR 2011 N 2 MARCH
NEWSLETTER COORDINATORS:
TEACHERS:
MANAFU GEORGETA-PROJECT COORDINATOR
POPESCU OANA-LEARNER
STUDENT:
MELINESCU ANDREEA-LEARNER
SCHOOL YEAR 2010-2011
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2. 2st Newsletter of the Grundtvig Partnership
“NO MORE TEARS” 2010-2012
YEAR 2011 N 2 MARCH
ROJECT DESCRIPTION
The Grundtvig Project „No more tears” is a learning
partnership aimed at adults, which is being implemented at a European
level bby four institutions:
• The Seyhan School Inspectorate- Adana, Turkey
• The Adult Centre of Monterroso – Monterroso, Spania
• The „Tudor Arghezi” Theoretical High school- Craiova, România
• Institut für die Förderung von Mehrsprachigkeit, Interkulturellen
Kompetenzen und Gleichbehandlung IFMIK- Viena, Austria.
CONTENTS
The Grundtvig Partnership „No more tears” has the national ID
1.THE PROJECT
“No MORE tears”
GRU-10-P-LP-25-DJ-TR, and its number as a Lifelong Learning
2.PROJECT
ACTIVITIES
Programme is LLP- Project 2010-1-TR1-GRU06-16423 2
3.SYMPOSIUM
4.THE DEBATE
PROJECT ACTIVITIES
5. THE
TRANSNATIONAL
MEETING IN
VIENNA
In November we disseminated the first transnational meeting
6. THE
in Turkey, Adana and issued the first newsletter.
DISEMINATION OF
THE PROJECT
7. ARTICLES
We have already trained two peer mediators for each high school
grade and have been monitoring their mediation activity.
At a county level we have organised the following activities:
o 20/01/2011- the symposium “Initiation to the ABC of
democracy. Social responsibility.”
o 17/02/2011- the debate “The influence of ITC and the
media in adults’ education”
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3. THE SYMPOSIUM
“Initiation to the ABC of democracy.
Social responsibility.”
The aim of this activity is to provide the opportunity to exchange opinions, experience
and examples of good practice in fields such as diversity, democracy, social responsibility and
social skills. The participants talked about the role of teachers, students and parents in
promoting diversity, democracy and social responsibility, as well as different educational
contexts enabling the students/adults to develop social skills.
The result of this activity was the first issue of the “No more tears” magazine mainly
aimed at teachers in the pre-university teaching system, high school students and their
parents.
The works that the participants presented were divided into four sections:
1. Initiation to the ABC of democracy. Social responsibility.
2. Examples of good practice in fields such as diversity, democracy and social responsibility.
3. Means and methods that can be used for a better communication between school and
family in order to ensure school success- for high school teachers.
4. Means and methods that can be used for a better communication between school and
family in order to ensure school success- for secondary school teachers.
The aims we have thus achieved were:
• The acknowledgement of the value of human and cultural diversity;
• The promotion of examples of good practice in the fields of diversity, democracy and
social responsibility;
• The familiarisation with various methods and techniques that can be used in order to
improve the quality of out-of-school activities related to fields such as diversity,
democracy and social responsibility;
• The identification of different means and methods that can be used for a better
communication between school and family in order to ensure school success;
THE DEBATE
The influence of ITC and the media in adults’ education
The aim of this activity is to provide the opportunity to exchange opinions, experience and
examples of good regarding the influence of ITC and the media in adults’ education. The
presentation of the articles was divided into three sections:
1. Teaching methods that can be used in adults’ education
2. The role of e-Learning in adults’ education
3. Examples of good practice in adults’ education (ITC, media, foreign
languages, etc)
The aims we have thus achieved were:
• Examples of the way extracurricular activities can be correlated with those in the
national curriculum;
• The identification of the role of IT and the media in adults’ education;
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4. • Teaching, learning and evaluation methods that can be used in adults’ education based
on IT;
• The importance of E-learning in adults’ education;
The result of this debate was the second issue of the “No more tears” magazine.
THE SECOND TRANSNATIONAL MEETING
IN VIENNA, AUSTRIA
The second transnational meeting in Vienna was attended by the staff members: Ms.
Georgeta Manafu-project coordinator, Mr. Ceauşu Dumitru and Mrs. Florenţa Avram and by
the learner members Ms. Popescu Oana and Mrs. Oprea Elena Alina.
The partners presented their activities between October and February, they set the
responsibilities for the time between March and September 2011. We also attended
workshops concerning the reduction of school and family violence and different cultural
activities. The activities were interactive. We worked in an open and intercultural
atmosphere. Each partner school presented its own problems in implementing various
measures in order to reduce school and family violence. We discussed about how we could use
the project blog in order to post the learners’ multimedia presentations, articles and
involvement. During the activities we managed to gather interesting pieces of information
about the partners’ cultures and civilisations.
We worked in a cooperative, flexible way within an international, multicultural and
multilingual team, which enabled all participants to develop their civic, interpersonal,
intercultural and social skills and abilities.
The next transnational meeting was set for Lugo, Spain, between the 23rd and the
28th of September 2011.
THE DISSEMINATION OF THE PROJECT
The project was disseminated in the “No more tears” magazine, after each
transnational meeting during the teachers’ meetings, on http://miedolj.forums-free.com/ and
within the grundtvigers@yahoogroups.com.
We presented the project activities in a film which includes pictures taken during the
activities and relevant information about each of them.
The partners communicated with each other by means of the e-mail and instant
messaging. Mobile phones were also used before all transnational meetings.
For transparency reasons we posted on the blog different pictures taken during the
activities, as well as many learners’ presentations.
Due to all the above-mentioned activities we managed to reduce the level of school
violence.
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5. HOME AND SCHOOL VIOLENCE
Teacher Florenta Avram
Teacher Oprea Elena Alina
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
 Domestic violence is any kind of physical, psychic, sexual aggression, infliction, or any
other crime, which has been purposefully committed by one member of the family
against another one, who lives or has lived in the same location as the victim
 In the case of women, the frequency of violent acts to which they are subjected by
their actual or former partner is six times higher than that of violence inflicted by
strangers.
 Violence can also occur in friendships;
 Alcohol is one of the reasons for which violent behaviour occurs.
TYPES OF HOME VIOLENCE
Examples of physical abuse:
 Pushing, shoving, hitting, armed aggression, immobilizing, tying or withholding the
victim, placing them in a dangerous place, refusing to help a sick or injured victim
Examples of psychic abuse:
 Intimidation, degradation and humiliation, criticism, insults, disparagement of the
victim, unfounded accusations, blaming, ignoring, ridiculing the victim’s needs, lying,
extreme jealousy, physical and social isolation.
 Sexual abuse means any kind of forced sex or sexual degradation.
The most important family generated factors for pupils’ violence are:
A. The social and affective climate within the family(the relationship between the parents,
their attitude towards the child and vice versa)
B. The type of family(well-structured, split after divorce, separation or death, reorganised.)
C. The economical conditions of the family ( a higher crime and school violence rate is
associated to neighbourhoods where there is a high level of unemployment, many under
qualified workers or many foreign people with small chances of employment)
D. The size of the family (the means by which discipline is imposed, the type of authority
towards the children- equal or preferential)
E. The level of the parents’ education (the social, professional and cultural status of the
family plays an important part in the insertion or rejection of the children at school and in
the occurrence or prevention of violent behaviour)
 In a human action, violence occurs when the means in use cause major shortcomings to
one or several people;
 Physical integrity can be damaged by means of bullying, corporal maltreatment,
wounding, mutilation, murder;
 Psychic integrity can be damaged by means of altering someone’s emotional and
intellectual state;
 Moral integrity can be damaged by means of gossips, slander, disparagement,
blasphemy, wrongful accusations and convictions, or any kind of injustice;
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6.  Ethnic, religious, cultural and social identity can be damaged by means of forbidding or
hindering the use of the mother tongue or of the religious creed, or the promotion of
people’s own values etc.
Violence can be divided into several forms:
a) – physical violence (e. g.war, hitting someone);
- moral violence (e. g. injustice, insults);
b) – material violence (e. g. burning a book, damaging an asset);
- symbolic violence (e. g. banning a book);
c) - direct violence (e. g. shooting someone);
- indirect violence (e. g. having someone shoot);
 The causes of violence are closely related to the environment in which man grows up
and develops: family, school, friends, the media.
 The reduction of violence in society depends on the improvement of its causes, on the
efficiency of institutional control, but also on the ability of each individual to
understand that aggression is not a solution to our problems.
 Specialists identify two types of school violence:
 Objective violence, which can be classified as criminal ( more or less serious
crimes) and which can be dealt with frontally.
 Subjective violence, which is subtler, more attitude related and can affect
school climate: contempt, humiliation, defiance, anti-school behaviour.
 Verbal violence is one of the most frequent forms of violence. However, it is not
perceived the same way by both students and teachers. Students tend to minimise its
seriousness, whereas teachers seem to overrate it.
 Context and school culture should be taken into account when establishing the level of
school violence.
 Violence can significantly affect the learning environment, it worsens the school
climate, and it also affects the relationship between students and teachers. School
violence can range from verbal violence (which occurs very often and can affect the
learning environment) to physical violence, which can become rather serious.
SCHOOL VIOLENCE
The factors which can generate violent incidents in schools are:
 The influence of action movies and computer games;
 Behavioral patterns acquired at home;
 Behavioral patterns acquired at school, related to the way in which students impose
their own authority to their peers;
 Defying, noisy behavior used in order to attract other people’s attention;
 The stress which is due to school assignments;
 Teachers’ sometimes preferential attitudes, which can lead to conflicts or even
aggression;
 The most frequent cases of school violence are between students themselves. The
next most frequent cases are between outsiders and students.
 The most frequent types of aggression are: insults and obscene language, threats,
psychological pressure (intimidation) and moderately aggressive gestures (shoving,
humiliating blows, etc).
 There have also been cases of violence in areas close to the school itself
 In any institution there are fixed rules defining the rights and obligations of any
student, as well as the sanctions which can be applied to those who disobey them.
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7. Therefore, if a student is exposed to any kind of violence, they must appeal to any
member of staff able to intervene. If the incident happens inside the school itself,
the student must alert the year manager, the teachers on duty, or the headmasters.
If it happens in the street, the victim can enlist the help of a police officer if they
see one, or call the emergency number 112. A child can ask for an adult’s help, or call
their relatives
Measures that have been taken in this school year
at Tudor Arghezi High school
Ms. Georgeta Manafu
Head of the Violence Reduction committee
1. The observance of internal regulations was thoroughly checked;
2. The school counselor got seriously involved in timely identifying risky situations that
could lead to the occurrence of violent behaviour in school and in adopting a set of
measures in order to prevent aggression;
3. The school and its partners organised various contests within the framework of
ongoing projects in order to identify and eliminate the most likely causes of school
violence;
4. Sports events were organised in order to promote rules of tolerance and fair play;
5. Interactive meetings with specialised people (psychologists, social workers, doctors,
police officers, lawyers) took place in order to raise awareness of all the risks
connected to aggressive behaviour and of the means to prevent it;
6. Students and their board of representatives got involved in undertaking various
projects, such as a campaign to establish a code of non-violence, in order to prevent
and stop school and community violence;
7. Anyone who wants to enter the school premises will do so only with an ID card. A
specific register will be set up to state the civil state, ID number, person to meet, the
time that person was allowed to enter the school and the time they came out again, as
well as any other details;
8. The students and teachers on duty will be permanently in touch with law-enforcement
forces who work around the school area, in order to timely notify them about any
suspicious event which may disturb the learning and teaching process;
9. The emergency phone numbers (the Police, the City Hall, the Law enforcement unit in
Craiova) are on display in the teachers’ meeting room and at the students’ notice
board;
10. All learning managers will draw charts to hand to the school counselor, Mrs. Florenţa
Avram, who will make notes of possible problems and of the students at risk of
delinquency. These charts will also be available for the sector police officer;
11. Preventive and educational activities were organised in order to prevent juvenile
delinquency, students becoming victims ; youngsters were informed about the potential
dangers of teenage. In order to do that, police officers will attend parents’ meetings
and speak about different legal aspects related to juvenile delinquency.
12. The Dolj County Police Inspectorate trained the guardians working at our school.
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