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Description
The aim of our project is to facilitate the development of modern and effective strategies for school counselors in Iasi County, necessary to make the counseling process more efficient and to support the growth of diversity in school, thus allowing better socio-emotional inclusion of students. The overall objective consists in the following:
1. Strengthening the specialized professional skills regarding the increase of diversity in school;
2. Development of specific competencies regarding the socio-emotional inclusion of students for 45 school counselors, 15 speech therapists and 15 mediators from Iași county;
3. Training in 6 school units of 6 teams to facilitate socio-emotional inclusion (ICE) including the school counselor, together with the speech therapist, school mediator / Romanian language teacher, a representative of teachers, students, parents, minorities;
4. Development of 6 projects to facilitate inclusion by ICE teams in the schools in which they operate.
By using the “working together” principle, the activities will ensure the target group''s access to quality services by : organizing a number of 3 workshops on strategies to increase the socio-emotional inclusion of students for 45 school counselors, 15 speech therapists and 15 mediators from Iasi County; establishing a no. of 6 inter-institutional collaboration partnerships; building 6 teams (with min. 5 members / team) to facilitate socio-emotional inclusion (ICE)
Summary of project results
In the current context, the increase in the number of requests for counseling, especially for the socio-emotional integration of students from disadvantaged groups, and calls for institutional and professional needs for the integration of international expertise in the psychopedagogical assistance activities provided to schools, continuous training of school counselors is necessary, this being the only effective way to increase the quality of psychopedagogical assistance services. That is why the training course ”Inclusion and diversity - opportunity for an inclusive society”, organized by Equality Center, Iceland, attended by 6 CJRAE Iași experts, as well as the capitalization of the skills developed during the training program, answered successfully these needs.
The follow-up activities took shape in the organization of a no. of 3 workshops, attended by a total of 79 specialists (55 school counselors, 15 speech therapists and 9 mediators), the workshops being facilitated by the 6 educational experts, direct beneficiaries of the training program. At the level of this activity, the added value consisted in organizing a workshop for a number of 19 educational counselors from Iași county.
The content of the workshops capitalized on the PhotoVoice technique and included a way of narrative structuring of debates regarding the applicability of learning, well-being in school, integration and individualization in learning, with an emphasis on the participatory and integrative dimension of this technique.
As a result of the signing of partnership agreements with 6 pilot schools in Iași County, 6 teams were formed to facilitate socio-emotional inclusion at the school level, which included over 40 students and 36 teaching staff, a total of 76 of educational actors. The socio-emotional inclusion facilitation teams developed and implemented 6 projects focused on ways to facilitate inclusion, which benefited a total of 474 students. Finally, a package of educational resources was developed (the "Diversity school: resource package for teaching staff" publication and the set of ISE cards). We appreciate that the project has generated added value by: counterbalancing the lack of skills at the level of school counselors and, implicitly, the risks to which students are exposed, the development of innovative support resources, the encouragement of educational partnership and the active involvement of education actors in the support process of inclusive education.