 Good afternoon everyone and welcome back. I hope you all had a nice break and managed to rest during this period. Today we are here together for the first webinar of the new year organized by School Education Gateway. My name is Marta and I'm pleased to host this webinar today. Just a practical information for the audience. The webinar is recorded and the recording might be used for dissemination purposes. If you have questions and answers, please post them in the chat and we will have a Q&A session at the end. Today's focus is educational activism, how teachers can empower school students. I'm delighted to welcome our guest speaker today, Raresh Boyku, who has been an activist for schools students right for over five years, having worked at the local, regional, national and currently international level. As a board member of the organizing bureau of the European School Students Union. He's passionate about enabling young people to understand the importance of speaking up and defending their rights. He's currently part of the European subgroup on pathway to school success and he is also pursuing the global low bachelor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. So without further ado, I would like to welcome you, Raresh. The floor is yours. Yes, thank you so much, Marta. Can you hear me well? Yeah, we can hear you perfectly. Amazing, thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you so much for the amazing introduction you have given me. Good afternoon, everyone. It's very nice to see you all here and I'm very glad to see that we have a lot of attendees for what is or what might seem at first, a very specific topic to tackle. And I'm very happy to know that most of you, the attendees are teachers and it feels me with joy to know that teachers are actually interested in helping their students raise their voice and fight for their rights and self-organize. But this is something we're going to be to be delving into a bit further into the webinar. But as Marta said, my name is Raresh Vojku. I'm from Romania, originally I'm from Bucharest. I'm 19 years old and I'm currently in my first year of university. I'm doing law in the Netherlands and I am a board member of the Organizing Bureau of European School Students' Unions. We are the only European organization that represents the rights of school students at the European level and we are a platform for collaboration for school students at the European level. We have member organizations in most of the European States. And I'm very, very glad to be here with you once again. But without any further ado, I think we can delve into the topic of the webinar, which is, as you all know, educational activism. More precisely, how can teachers or how can you empower school students? But first of all, I think it's very important to delve into the topic by giving a bit of a definition to all of this because for most of you, it might seem maybe as a very new concept or something you haven't really heard of before, up until this point. So the first part has been fulfilled, the fact that you want to learn more about this, but now I'm actually delving into what educational activism is. So there isn't a single definition for educational activism that we could pinpoint and say, yes, this is what activism means, this is what the essence of activism or the essence of activism is. But to sum it up very, very clearly and concisely, I would just say first of all that activism is not something, at first it might seem like something maybe disruptive or something that can have negative connotations, but that's not the case. And I would first like to start by telling you that activism is for everyone and especially school activism is for everyone. It's for teachers, it's for school students, it's for parents. So basically the entire school community can take part in school activism. So what does this precisely mean? Basically school activism means getting engaged again as a school student, as a teacher, as a parent at the school level to better the educational climate and the educational act at a school level. So it basically means fighting for the rights of school students, for the rights of teachers, for a better educational system at a school level and maybe even at higher levels, at government levels, at policymaking levels. So it's very much so based on a community and on the need of the school community to fight for the rights of its stakeholders and to fight for the betterment of the educational system. So to sum it up, education activism is a fight. And it might seem a bit aggressive to say fight at first but as we'll see further along the webinar, you should find out that sometimes it really can be a fight and I'm sure that in your experience as teachers at a school level you've oftentimes faced a lot of problems, maybe lack of resources or maybe outdated curriculum that no longer serves the interests of your students or is not updated to the needs of society and maybe sometimes you felt powerless or sometimes you felt as if there's nothing you can do to better the educational system in your country, to better the school that you work in or the schools that you work in. That isn't true. So what we're going to explore today is the opportunities that you have, first of all, to help your students raise their voice and fight for a better educational system for us all. And then second of all, how can you actually get involved and speak your mind and raise your voice and make sure that your needs and the needs of your students are actually heard, taken into account and cared for because that's what this is all about. So this is what education activism means. But moving further along, we'll find out that a big part of educational activism and fighting for a better educational system takes part in a bit of a broader framework. What we like to call school democracy So the second question, of course, is what does school democracy mean? And I think it's a bit of a natural question. It's not the term that we come across very, very often. But just so to make sure that we all have the same understanding, I'm sure that we all know what democracy means. So it basically means a state or a country or a government which is ruled by the people through an elected representative or through elected representatives. So basically it means the power of the people if we were to translate it from Greek. And if we are to put that in the school in the school context, it basically means the same thing. So school that is led by its constituents, by its members, by school students, by teachers, and of course by the parents of the students. And it's very important to have this concept in mind and to start this webinar and to start this journey in school activism with this very, very clear concept in your head that schools and school communities in general must be led by their constituents, by their stakeholders, be them teachers, be they school students, or again parents. So in this context in the context of school democracy, we of course have all sorts of different mechanisms that are in place to ensure this democratic way of running a school. For most of us, for most educational systems, it might be a school board which is made up of representatives of teachers, of school students, of parents which make decisions on the school budget or the school timetable on how the school should function like the long term strategy of the school management. So we have all these sorts of bodies and organisms that are at a school level which make decisions on behalf of the teachers or the students. So it's only natural to pose the question how democratic are these organisms in reality and how much does it represent what school students want, what teachers want, what parents want and how much does it actually fight for a better educational system. So this is the question that we're starting from because we've seen all over Europe in almost all of the member states of the EU, we've seen a great reduction in democratic spaces. Less and less people go out to vote in elections, less and less people make their voices heard or want to make their voices heard, less and less people actually have the opportunity to talk to decision makers, be they members of parliament or local authorities or whatever other action of the sort and it's a very great situation that we're in. Because democracy can only survive and democracy can only move on if we, its subjects, actually get involved and actually speak up for our rights and actually keep those who are in power if we keep them accountable for their actions and if we actually get involved to steer this very unstable shift that democracy can sometimes be. But so now that we've given quite a comprehensive definition of school democracy and also we've defined what democratic processes at a school level are. So we're talking about school boards, we're talking about administration councils, we're talking about advisory councils at the school level. So any sort of mechanism through which school students and teachers can actually take part in decisions that are being made at a school level. This is what we mean by school democracy and so now the question is how well do these bodies actually function? How well do how well are your opinions and your reviews and your wishes actually represented in these bodies? And for this reason I would like to invite you to fill out a mentor. I don't know how we should do this right now. Eleonora, should I share my screen with the mentor or can you open the link? Yes, I'm going to share my screen. Thank you. Thank you. So the question that you're going to be to be asked to answer is if you take part in democratic processes in your school. So that can mean to have a definition that can mean either getting involved in the school boards or talking to the principal of your school about issues that affect you and your students. It can also be about fighting for your rights and speaking up when things go wrong. I don't know if you can see the code for joining. We're going to post it. Okay, okay. The mentee code will be posted just in a minute in the chat of the meeting. Yes, so you now have the link in the chat. Aranis, can you post the code yourself please? Yes. Thank you. I've just sent the code in the chat as well. So please go to mentee.com and use the code that I've just posted in the chat. Yeah, so basically what we're referring to in this context is whether or not, again, you have run for a position on your school board. You have encouraged your students to run for positions in the school board. If you've voiced your opinions, if you've filed petitions with the school administration for something that was going wrong. So we see a really interesting division. So two respondents so far always take part in the democratic process in their schools. One person sometimes takes part in his processes and two people never take part in such processes. The mentee is still open so please continue answering so we can have a bit of perspective on the topic. I'm going to post the code again in the chat so it's accessible for everyone. So the percentages have changed quite a bit. So far out of 15 people who have answered, eight people always take part in the democratic process in schools. Five people sometimes take part in these processes and two people never take part in them. I'm going to post the code again maybe Mrs. Dulkero, maybe you can see it now. Can we have one last refresh for the page in the back of the presentation please? Actually not because there is another slide. So the percentages as we see them right now are quite good. I'm really happy to see this. Most of you who have answered have actually do get involved at least sometimes in democratic processes in your school and most of you do that on a constant basis. So for the final part of the session maybe we can actually talk a bit about what these bodies actually are and what they consist for you and we can have a little discussion at the end of the session to see how these bodies actually work in your country so we can learn from one another in the practice of getting involved in these processes. Okay. Thank you so much for your answers. You can keep answering and we will make this mentee slide available to you after the meeting. I think that can be arranged. But so now we talked about democratic processes in schools. We're going to circle back a bit to the main topic of this webinar which is how you teachers can actually help students and the power students to get involved in such processes and to speak their minds to speak up for their rights and to self-organize in such a way that allows them to actually be able to defend their rights and to fight for a better educational system which actually caters to their needs and which actually has them as the main actor in the center of their education. So I'm sure that many of you have worked with or have at some point supported school students councils, regardless of the level being at the school level, at the regional level, at the local level I'm sure that most of you have heard of or have worked with these sort of councils. They are maybe one of the most basic forms of student organization that you can that we can find in schools and I'm very curious to see a part from these students councils. What are the methods that you have used so far to encourage your students to speak up? So what are the methods that you have put in place up until this point to actually encourage them to be a part of the school community to ask questions, to voice their opinions, to fight for their rights. So we're going to stay on this mentee, the code is the same. But we have another slide and this is a slide with open questions so you can actually fill in the answer by yourself and just say what are the methods that you use to empower your students to make their voices heard. I don't know, be there you can share resources with them about how they can self-organize or you can offer them support and creating an organization. There are a lot of ways to do it but I would like to hear from you and maybe this can also serve as a space for exchanging good practices and how you help your students make their voice heard. Okay, so we have someone in the chat said that they use Google Forms. Yes, again this can also be for example because I suppose that you use Google Forms for feedback, maybe after lessons or after a semester. So that is also with making your students voices heard. It could be again through feedback at the end of each lesson or feedback at the end of a semester. So we're talking about various degrees of making their voice heard and various ways of doing it as well. So right now the floor is yours to tell us a bit more about this. So in the chat on Teams we also have a few other answers. Someone said debates, debates at a classroom level which is very, very good. Through poster making and using creative depictions, debates, critical thinking methods hasn't changed the slide on mentee. Okay, I think maybe now it should, yeah, I think now it should work. Apologies for that, it was narrow on my side. But now you should see the slide on mentee as well and you can put your answer there. Thank you for pointing that out. Okay, so we see debates, poster making, critical thinking methods. So I'm very, this actually makes me very, very happy to see that features are actually doing such things. And it's very, very important to have debates at a classroom level because it helps school students actually develop their arguments and help them indeed, as someone said, develop their critical thinking methods and critical thinking skills. And it's amazing and I'm encouraging you from the bottom of my heart to keep doing these. Self-organized students projects, create students at activities, voting process, conversations in our classroom, public speeches like tech talks, we use debate and tools to vote such as Google Forms. This is amazing to hear and to see. I'm very, very happy that you're all doing this. And we shall see further down the presentation that this is an amazing way to do it. And it's a very big part of actually helping students, first of all, develop as adults and as function adults in a democratic society. And also, you might have the surprise that if you do these kinds of things, so debates, encourage critical thinking, show them tech talks, make posters and help them express themselves to creative means, you might have the surprise that at one point, your classroom and your students are a lot more active because they have this exercise of speaking up, they have this exercise of talking in the classroom, so they're not afraid to voice their opinion or to answer your questions without being afraid that they might be wrong because there is a very big part of voice students might not sometimes speak up because they're scared of judgment, they're scared of being wrong and this is something that teachers should learn to nurture. That's being, letting go of the fear of being wrong because only through being wrong can we understand sometimes. So presentations, watching some videos, using social media, expressed their opinions by helping them become a literate and digital literate. I tell them to stand up for their rights when there is an unjust and arbitrary rule imposed by the school, encourage to be active in school and social problem solving, cooperation of students with students from other countries, someone said in the judge's slogan, yes, this is amazing. Thank you so much for the contribution. It's again heartwarming to see that this is actually happening and I'm sure that so far, and again, maybe we can also talk about this at the end in a bit more open format, I'm sure that you've seen so far that having these debates and having these conversations with your students has not in any way diminished the degree of authority that you have in the classroom. So just because you're closer to your students and because you actually help them think and develop their critical thinking skills that can actually strengthen your relationship with your students and it might actually make them more open to your lessons, to learning and it's going to make and I can throw that from experience because I've had teachers who have done similar, similar, who have used similar methods. It makes it a pleasure to come to these classes. So keep doing what you're doing because you're on the right path. So organized campaigns, poster making, again you could translate that one in the middle there and I think my Italian is not that good, I must say. No, but I suppose the same person repeated debates because it's indeed debating and here we have express their ideas with critical thinking and freedom. Oh, yeah, that's a very good concept to pass on to the concept of freedom and what it means for a semi-democratic society. So the Mentimeter, again, is going to stay open until the end of the session so you can keep adding your contributions and this will be shared so you can also after the session is done and after more people have put in their contribution you can also take a look at it and see what else you can do in your classroom as inspiration and as an exchange of good practices. Thank you so much for sharing this. Can we go back to the presentation, please? Yes, so coming back to the presentation, this is the part where we talk a bit about what school democracy actually means for school students and this is students participation and activism. And as I told you earlier, I'm sure that for the most of you have already interacted with some sort of organization led by students, be it a student council, be it a student board, be it a small student association. So we're talking about these sorts of organized means in which students make their voices heard but we can also talk about individual students which choose to become activists at a school level. So we can be talking about students who separately take their issues up with the school administration and want to make their voices heard and to voice their opinions and to say what the issues are within the school. And I think it's a shame because this happens very little these days in terms of how often students actually have the courage to go up to the principal or go up to the school board and actually voice their opinions and voice their complaints about what is happening in their school. And this happens mostly because they're afraid to do so. This is something that we're going to tackle a bit further than the presentation but just to give you a very short example of what a school students council looks like or what its values are at its core. So students councils are of course, as their name says, councils of students. So organizations which are created oftentimes and most of the times led by students themselves and they serve as a forum, as a platform for students to collaborate, to share their opinions to share their ideas and then at the end for them to be able to take a unitary opinion as an organization up with the school board or up with the school principal. So what is very important to understand is that most of these school councils, the vast majority of school councils of students councils function to democratic means. So they are based on free elections and open elections for which any school student can run and can be elected and most of the decisions in these organizations are made based on voting. So it's democracy at its best. It's the essence of democracy, if we could say so. So it's very important to remember that these organizations, when they come up with a request or when they point out an issue that's present at a school level they're not talking for themselves. They're talking for the entire school student's body and it's very important for them to be heard because they're not representing themselves or it's not only either the president of that council that voices their opinion or it's not their personal opinion but it's the opinion of all the students in the school. So it is precisely why it's so important for these councils to exist and for them to be taken seriously because they might be seen sometimes as being somewhat trivial or not being so important but in fact these councils actually represent the voice of the entire of the entire student body. So basically half the school or more than half the school has an issue with a certain topic or issue with a certain thing. So in that moment it's important to know that the student's council is the one voicing that issue with a principal or with a certain teacher with the school administration and that's why they must be taken seriously as well. But as I pointed here in this Venn diagram a student's council is based on three main values or has three main topics or ideas which it is based on. The first one and the one which is maybe the most important is independence. The reason why this is so important is because as I told you earlier we're talking about an organization that represents the entire student body. So basically I don't know 100, 200, 300 students as many as there are in that school they're all represented by this one students council which is why it's so important for the students council to be independent and for its members to be independent both from political parties or from teachers interferences or anything that's one to change their decision making processes so these school students councils must be independent. So if you're a teacher and you're dealing with a school students council that's amazing if you support them and you empower them which are the other two pillars but you must never ever interfere with their decision making processes because then it's not really a students council anymore it's more of a hybrid between a students and a teacher's opinion council and that is not what what students empowerment means not at all. And so the other two values or ideas that this this form of students organization is based on is empowerment and support and this is where you teachers come in so we're talking about again about empowerment and support. What this means is that U.S. teachers and as esteemed figures both in the classroom and within the school have the opportunity to empower your students and have the power to empower your students to speak up for their rights to create these these students councils if they're not already created or to get involved in them if they're already in place at the school level and last but not least to also give them that tiny bit of courage they need to speak up and raise their voice and raise the issues that affect them without having a fear that it will be punished or that they will have some sort of of bad consequences afterwards that they will get a bad grade or they will be kicked out from the school just because they voice their opinions and because they said that something is not working as it should within the school so this is where you come in both to empower them and to actually convince them to speak up for their rights and support. Support means that you support them both at the personal level and that you help them with any questions that they might have because students might not always know what the principal must do or what the administration council or the school council or the school board must do and this is where you come in to help them understand better what these bodies do, how they can they can address them, how they can formulate a petition or a letter to the principal so this is where your knowledge and your experience as teachers and your life experience comes in and supporting those students actually understanding what tools they have to make their voices heard through democratic mechanisms and through democratic needs. So this is very very important. So basically without any of these three pillars that you see on the screen we can't really talk of well functioning, relevant, representative school students councils but then we have these three pillars and this is what it ideally looks like so independence, empowerment support and then the question is and here I'm going to talk about from my own experience as a school student representative about how it really is. So coming from Romania I was the president of the school students council in my school and then at a local level and then I was the president of the national school students council representing over two million school students and what I've seen every step of the way is that I see that someone said in the chat Calipso said in the chat that students councils are occasionally influenced from political parties. That sometimes can be true. However at the school level and this is what our webinar is addressing this is a bit more unlikely. Most of the times at a school level the issues that's these councils and school students who raise issues or who are active or were activist phase is first of all again the fear of punishment either by teachers or by the principal or by the school community and they feel like if they speak up or if their voice their opinions are doing something wrong and then I can tell you from experience that when I was 15 or when I was 14 and I just got into high school and I got involved in a students council I almost felt like I was the black sheep of the school so I was that person that teachers always looked down upon because we were seen as always wanting to create a scandal or to be against everything and things of the sort which cannot be further from the truth. This is not true at all. Every school student representative that I've met in my life so far and I've been doing this for five years has been willing and wants to work with teachers wants to work with the school board with the school administration to make things better in the school and to make things better for school students as well within the school community. So if there's anything you take away from this webinar I think there's almost 100 teachers in this webinar. If there's anything you can take away from here just at a first glance is the perspective that you have on students councils so they are not made up of these naughty students that only want to create disruptions and against candles in schools. They're created by young people who have decided to speak their minds and by young people who have decided to fight for their rights and in my opinion it's your duty as teachers to support them and to help them again know what their rights are fight for these rights because at the end of the day it is also your role as teachers to form adults and to train adults that can be a functional part of society and being able to voice their opinions and to fight for our rights when they are infringed upon that is a fundamental part of being an adult and of being a member of society. So this is the plea that I'm leaving you with from my own experience. So just be open listen to school students and to their representatives and try to support them as much as you can by using the following tools. Now we're going to talk a bit about what are the do's and don'ts of school student participation from a teacher's view. So basically from what I've encountered in these past five years at all levels I've put together a few pieces of advice that I can give you in terms of what are the things that actually help students become activists and to fight for their rights and to fight for a better school community and what are the things that interfere with their self-organizing processes and with their involvement in school democracy and in school activism. So a few of the don'ts, a few of the do's actually, because we're going to start with the do's first. What you can do, first of all supports school students to self-organize. So someone said in the Mentimeter earlier and that's an amazing example someone said, a teacher said that whenever there's an issue in the school they encourage their students to raise their voice or to take up a petition or file a letter with a school administration to address that issue and to actually show the principal or the school board that school students care about those issues and that they are involved in solving them actively. So basically what this means is that whenever your students raise an issue and it might be a very serious issue either that the school budget does not cover the price of heating and that is they have to suffer in the cold during classes or that school transportation is not available to them and they cannot get to school because they cannot afford it or that their school allowances or any other kind of support money that might be received from the school is not being paid. So it can be very serious issues like this or like these there might even be something like the fact that their breaks are way too short and they don't have time to go to the bathroom or to eat their lunch or to actually just take a deep breath and relax for a bit before the next class starts. So it can be all sorts of issues and it's very, very important and this is what I'm what my plea is for you not to dismiss the issues that they encounter because we were all students once and you know just how hurtful and how annoying at times can be for your teachers not to listen to you and not to understand what you're trying to convey and not to actually treat you as an adult in the making and as a as a citizen in the making. So support school students to self-organize again inform them on what their rights are what they can do to reach this administration, they can file petitions, letters protests, campaigns so they can take all sorts of forms and shapes and I realize that I just said protest and that might for some of you be a bit too much or be where the line is crossed but we shouldn't forget that oftentimes protests are a great way to make your voice heard and to advocate for what you believe in and to make your voice heard for those who are in power. It doesn't have to be a protest that disrupts the school hours or the classes or anything it can just be a peaceful protest but I can guarantee that should a protest take place it will definitely bring some attention to the issues that you would like to raise and why not maybe you can also also join your students in that protest and also encourage your fellow teachers to join as well if it's an issue that affects you all and which you really want to put an end to. The second one is advocate for participation and decision making bodies within the school, this is fairly straightforward so if you're a teacher who is engaged with the school board with the school administration and you see that there are no students at the table when decisions are being made that affect them speak up, say this is not okay we're talking about our students, we're making decision apologies we're making decisions for our students, we're talking about them so they should be at the table they should have a say at the table they should have a say in matters that concern them and they should have a vote on these issues so this is also what you can do you can ask the school administration you can ask the school board to include students and demand that they include students in decision making processes at the level of the school and this is going to mean a lot more coming from you as teachers as respected members of the school community and of course everything that comes with that then it might be when it comes from a student because if a school doesn't listen to students in the first place it's highly unlikely that they will listen to them when they ask for a place at the table okay offer them spaces to make their voices in the classroom and this and that's why I'm very very happy that the Mentimeter results have shown this and that you actually do that because it's so important to create a safe space in the classroom where your students actually feel like they can ask you questions and they can say if they haven't understood something because I'm sure that most of you are frustrated sometimes with the fact that your students might be a bit inactive or you feel like they're not listening to you or they're on their phones all the time but not so the way to solve this is to actually get them engaged in whatever you're teaching beats we're teaching science or mathematics or languages or literature get them engaged have debates talk with them make sure that they're actually in the classroom with you that is so important that it actually empowers them to voice their opinions and to ask the questions and say if they haven't understood something in the moment and it also gives them a bit of courage to speak up further on as well in their life so it can really make a very big difference I had a teacher when I was in high school who always encouraged us to ask questions and to get us to think and get our gears grinding and if no one had a question our teacher would ask us a question to sort of get a debate going on so and these are almost the only classes I remember from my entire from all of my years of high school so you know what the difference it makes in the long term for school students empower them to get involved in the school community this again is very important because coming from you and actually encouraging them to you know run for positions in the students council or run for positions in the school board if there are positions available for students that can actually encourage them to do it then coming from you it might actually make a difference from them and convince them to go that extra step go that extra step and get involved in the school community in any way or form or body that you might have at a school level and now the don'ts so as I was saying earlier do not I'm begging you do not influence the decision making processes so help them set up their organizations make sure that they have the resources they need or whatnot but do not take part in their meetings if they do not feel comfortable with you doing so do not try to influence their decision making processes by feeding them your arguments or by telling them your opinion and trying to imply that this is the only right opinion because students are at the end still growing and still in their formation years so they could be easily influential but if you do this and if you actually influence their decisions then you haven't done anything so you haven't helped your students at all all you've done is just impose your views on the students council or on the student representatives and yeah basically did nothing unfortunately at the end of the day another don't is do not promote tokenism so most of you know what tokenism means basically it is a form of having school students or stakeholders participate in decision making processes just so you could say that they were there so for example in a school board meeting you call a student to come sit in that meeting so you can say that oh we consulted school students or we talked to school students when in fact that student didn't say at work a word during the entire meeting so it's very important to make sure that student's participation is actually meaningful that it actually contributes to the decisions that are being made and that the students point of view and what students have to say actually matter towards the final decision and they actually make a difference for the final decision which is being which is being made and last but not least do not preclude them for making their voices heard this is the worst thing you can do that being either for bidding students council or for bidding students for running for students council or trying to shush students up when they try to voice their opinions or not encouraging them to voice their opinions in their classroom this all means that you're precluding them for making their voices heard and it might not seem like a very big deal for you in the moment but for school students for what is in the end the teenager to feel like they are silent and that their opinions don't matter will have a great great impact further along in their life so it will turn them into a citizen that doesn't care about politics that doesn't care about how things, how a country is being run and in the end this has an impact on the entire society because you know we go out and vote for politicians less and less so the voter turn out rates are lower and lower and this is precisely because some some citizens, some adults who are one school students who do not have their opinions heard they feel in their subconscious that their opinions don't matter and what they have to say doesn't matter in reality and this is also something I've heard often times from adults that I'm not going to go out and vote because it makes no difference or I'm not going to say that this is not going wrong because it makes no difference well I don't know if you need to hear this right now but as a school student representative that has had meetings with governments and had meetings with a minister of education I can tell you that voicing your opinion constantly and voicing your whatever issues you might come across in your in your careers and employing your students to do the same thing can actually make a difference it can change laws it can change policies it can change paradigms and ways of thinking so it can actually truly make a difference and I think you really need to hear this and to acknowledge this and to understand this that your work and your school students work and their activism can truly make a difference in your school in your local community or maybe even at a national level as as I did once even though not a lot of people believe that I could so everything is possible if you have just a tiny bit of faith in your students so to conclude what do we take away from this first of all support school students with self-organized stand for their rights to participate in decision making processes so when no one thinks that students should be at the table be that person that says no we are talking about them we're talking about our students they should have a say in the final decision they should have a say in what we're going to decide for them so advocate and ask constantly and make sure that there are students at the table because otherwise if because we are a community at a school level right where teachers where school students where parents so if one of us suffers and if one of us is excluded from the table be it students be it teachers be it parents it won't be too long before the school board and the school administration might see that there's not really a community at all and they're going to to care even less about hearing the opinions of the stakeholders so if you don't encourage your students to make their voices heard if you don't fight for their rights to speak at the table ask main beneficiaries of what is going on in the school and of the education process basically you might want to realize that democracy in your school is decaying by the day and at one point you might even fight yourself kicked out of these kinds of of these kinds of meetings and yes condemn tokenism whenever you encounter it and I've seen that in the chat this has sparked quite a bit of a debate what tokenism means but yes it's you got to the meaning of it basically what it means is having stakeholders for example students teachers parents at the table where decisions are taken without them actually having something to say in the final the final decision so just having students at the table for example just to say oh yeah we've consulted with students and we've asked students what they want but it's not actually meaningful and it's not actually caring for the students opinions at all so yes this was pretty much what I had to talk to you about I think we can I'm going to pass it back to you thank you very much Radesh thank you for this great presentation I'm sure I can state this on the behalf of all the participants more than one teacher in the chat said that it was really really useful to hear all this from a student's point of view of course and I think you really managed to combine your personal experience with wider practices highlighting really how teachers can play a key role in enabling the students to self-organize and fight for their rights so I think it was a really great presentation and it was also nice that the participants had the opportunity to express themselves in the chat and contribute bringing some experience as well actually a nice interaction and a nice conversation is being created in the chat and of course thank you very much Donora for supporting us from a technical point of view during the presentation but definitely now I would like to leave some time for the questions we have actually some questions so I'm going to read them out loud for you so you can reply is that okay so the first one is do you have experiences with students involvement in decision making at primary school or even grade? Yeah so basically in the work we've done so far with school students' involvement we've worked with frameworks for involvement of students in primary and pre-primary education and of course the mechanisms for getting students or pupils involved at those levels are widely different than at primary or secondary or upper secondary school level so what we've seen is that when talking about pupils or children who attend kindergarten for example these democratic processes have to be very much very much so simplistic for example if they also have lunch at school provided by the school maybe you can do some sort of elections weekly so you can do an election when they have to decide on what they would like to eat for lunch between a cupcake and a cheesecake or something of the sort for dessert or also getting them to what I'm thinking of right now and what I've paused is because I've thought of something that someone sent in the chat and that is that the key behind all of this and behind students' participation is to actually truly listen to students' opinions and I think that this applies in the primary and pre-primary stage as well that meaning that of course you're not going to address the same issues that you're going to address at the secondary school level so we're not going to talk about the budget or having pre-primary school students on the school board but you can start up conversations in the classroom for example those which can develop the rights of these pupils to can develop the ability of school students to make a choice and to voice their opinions for example when it comes in their schedule like their timetables or when they should take a break or again what they would like to eat for lunch or where they would like to go for the classroom trip or what they would like to talk about in today's arts class or science class or practical abilities or whatever it's called when you draw or paint and everything of the sort so there are ways to actually listen to your students regardless of their age and as a teacher you might actually be surprised to see how often school students or pupils or children can regard and have something to say of course at very different degrees of complexity but if you actually create a space in which students feel like you care about their opinions and you care about what they have to say not only are they going to be more open towards starting these conversations themselves but also they're going to have a lot more trust in you when having these debates in the classroom and they're going to be a bit more more honest in such debates and I saw that someone said earlier about how can school students be if I may mark that because it sort of ties into this about how school students can be encouraged to voice their opinions without teachers when some of them don't do that ever so when they're on their own the thing is of course when your entire life or when your entire school career as a school student no one listened to your opinions and no one told you what you think and what you are saying matters it can be a bit tough at first to actually develop this exercise and to actually understand that again your opinion matters and that's the classroom is a safe space for sharing your opinions and for sharing issues that concern you so if you're a teacher that is trying to start a conversation in the classroom and is starting to create a safe space for your students for them to voice their opinions and at first they're a bit reticent or you feel like they're not really engaged in what you're talking about in what you're saying the advice that I can give you is just keep going keep sparking these conversations maybe with topics that might be a bit closer to their heart so I don't know that's at first about I don't know teacher salaries or how the education system looks like and things of the sort but with topics which might be a bit closer to them for example if they feel like what you're teaching them is relevant for them in this age or if they feel like if they feel safe in the school if they feel like their well-being is taking into account in the school space there are a lot of mild issues you can start with actually create a culture of dialogue in the classroom but if you need to hear this it is a sustained effort so it takes time to build this relationship of trust with your school students with your students in general but it's worth it at the end of the day I really think it's worth it thank you thank you very much Radesh I think it's really important what you said at the beginning regarding the primary and primary school because teachers need to know at early stages the thing is just about creating as you said the right environment for pupils to communicate to express themselves of course on different issues and problems there is another question for you given what you said toward the end shouldn't teacher guides for students in their activism especially in an early stage of their self-organization is that considered to influence them as well that's a very, very, very good question yes of course and congratulations yes it's a very good question and of course because that's what this webinar basically has been about supporting school students in the first stages actually helping them get involved in school democracy and in school students councils and everything but I think we have to think about what this support actually means so in my opinion the acceptable support that teachers can offer students is again opening the classroom and being very open about having conversation in the classroom about issues that concern them of course without affecting the teaching process and everything but this is of course implied but having these conversations in the classroom and by doing this encouraging students to speak up first at the classroom level then if they have issues at a school level maybe even further and through every step of this process because I think this is what your question was pointing towards yes school students need support but this is only at a certain point when they actually start getting involved in school students meetings and they start attending meetings of the school board or fighting petitions and having campaigns and everything you can still support them but oftentimes it's better to support them after they've developed and become students activists it's better if you support them especially when they ask for it because your support is very much appreciated especially in the early stages so helping them understand how society works and why it's important to get involved and actually giving them the essence of that spirit of democracy being a part of a community but then what they do later on and I can tell you that as a former school student representative at a school level is very much so tied to their own learning process so even if they might make mistakes even if they might screw up a couple of times here and there that is part of their learning process and I think it's important to remember that and to respect the fact that even though all of us have different learning processes and we learn in very different ways there are own ways to learn and we should be we should get credit for that Yeah, thank you very much Radesh, I'll take just two seconds to inform the participants that we are approaching the end of the webinar and we have posted a link to the feedback form in the chat so do not forget please to save it and completed after the webinar and maybe Radesh if you have time I have one more question that I think is really, really relevant considering the time we are living and it's actually how can teachers provide the mentorship online can do all of these online given the currency circumstances That's a great question, thank you Well, most of us and even maybe people who are here in this webinar after an hour of being here are already tired of hearing us and looking at the screen so we very much know about Zoom fatigue about Google Meet fatigue so being in meetings all day and not having the willingness to do any more online meetings but in this context of school activism I think we can see this as an opportunity so for example before COVID and before we started doing online classes and having contact with our teachers online before this being in contact with your teachers meant staying in class after class finished or having a chat with them between in your breaks which might have been annoying for both teachers and school students because they had to use their break to raise an issue or to talk a bit more about what happened during the class so what you can do is have separate sessions with them so maybe I don't know a bit later in the afternoon after you've had lunch and everything you can have a session with your students where you just talk about issues that concern them and you just have a debate about a certain topic or you can watch a movie or as someone else said you can watch a TED Talk for example TED Talks and very important matters and then you can talk about the arguments of the person who had the TED Talk and see if they fit with their arguments or if they think differently so it's mostly just about having a dialogue, a real honest dialogue with your students this is the key of it it might be a bit complicated or they might be a bit disengaged at first or you might not even be able to engage but that's perfectly natural because not all of them are interested in this and again that is okay and it's understandable at the end of the day but even those 5, 10, 15 students that we managed to bring together just know that you are making a difference for them and if you feel like it doesn't matter anymore or that you can keep going anymore remember that's for those students which you have empowered you really are making a difference and that's a very good reason to keep going once again thank you, thank you for the whole presentation and then for addressing all the questions that we had from the teachers I think it was really inspiring and useful for everyone and I would like to remind all the participants that you will have all the material, the presentation and the recording available after the webinar on the webinar page one last practical information for the participants first of all I remind you to save the link to the feedback form and second I would like to inform you that no certificates are issued for this webinar so we are really approaching the end now and thank you Radesh, thank you Eleonora for supporting us in the background and I would like to leave you the floor for the last comment for our participants Radesh Yes, so as a last word last couple of words actually I thank you once again for taking part in this webinar thank you for being here, thank you for showing interest in this, so as I told you the first step has been done, the fact that you're interested in this and that you actually care about supporting your students and yeah what can I say, so if you've done this before if you encourage your students to take action and to get involved before congratulations, keep going and if you haven't then all I can tell you is it might be a tough journey at first but at the end of the day it will be worth it because you really are changing lives and to be honest in my opinion that's what being a teacher is all about changing lives and shaping minds That's great, I think there's a lot of food for thought so I would like to wish you all a good evening and see you for the next webinar next month Bye bye everyone, thank you very much for joining us today