It was February 2019 when the Teachers' Council of the 1st High School of Acharnes (Menidi) invited the competent educational coordinator to help them in dealing with successive incidents of violence taking place among students inside and outside the school. Violence was related to the composition of the students’ community, local conflicts and practices. She asked the former Children’s Ombudsman and founder of the Initiative for Article 12 (InArt12) G. Moschos to support the school in managing the issue. A meeting was organised, where several teachers stated their willingness to do everything they could in order to change the situation that often seemed to be uncontrollable.
Following this, a very interesting experiment started in this school. Six teachers, headed by the Deputy Headmaster P. Kalogeropoulos, agreed to invest time and effort to change the climate of the school. With their help, assemblies were organized for the first time in all 12 classes of the school, where the issue of violence was discussed and suggestions were made by the children to deal directly with the incidents and prevent them in the long run. Every class chose two children who expressed their wish to participate in a “Friendship Group” that was formed and started meeting once every week after the end of the school programme. For the content of the meetings materials from relevant sources were used (Compasito of the Council of Europe, school mediation programme, etc.). The teachers met also with the former director of the 2nd High School of Ano Liossia M. Kotseli and students who presented their own experiences and similar actions they had taken, to tackle school violence.
During their meetings, the members of the Friendship Group got to know each other better through games, they discussed their classmates' suggestions, exchanged views about the incidents taking place inside and outside their school, planned activities and kept records on their decisions. Their meetings were combined with sweets, music, good company and a day trip to mount Parnitha. After a month of regular group meetings, assemblies were organised again in all classes to have a feedback on the progress of their efforts to change the attitude of the school community towards violence.
The Friendship Group undertook also to organise an activity for the whole school, a celebration named "We create together a Friendship Forest" in the context of the “Thematic Week activities” of the school, attended by all 250 students.
 |
 |
 |
The members of the Friendship Group were divided into 12 pairs, and each of them took up a subject from the proposals that were addressed by the classes (When a fight occurs do not observe, Dialogue, Mediation, Consequences, Teachers, Headmaster, Supervision, Activities, Discussions in classes, Video Projections, Seminars for parents and teachers, Friendship Group). They welcomed their classmates who were divided into 12 sub-groups. Each group painted their own tree and wrote words on "leaves" that they cut, painted and stuck on it. Then the trees were hung on the walls of the school and all the children enjoyed the collective creative depiction of a new attitude of the school community towards violence, which is based on agreement and cooperation.
The experiment will continue next year. The teachers' intention is to combine the function of the Friendship Group with efforts to reduce the school dropout of Roma students and to start a peer mediation group. The challenge is great. But the changes that occurred within a few months show that, by listening to the children, empowering them, trusting them and giving them the opportunity to share responsibilities, the school can have very impressive results. The 1st High School of Acharnes is now a good example of a collective effort to build a different school attitude towards violence.
The Forest of friendship:
{gallery}1_gimnasio_axarnwn{/gallery}