Guidelines for Teachers

3.4 The importance of external stakeholders involvement

In order to carry out the teaching of EU citizenship skills through emotional intelligence and empathy, and to give the project a maximum chance of success, it is important to list the external stakeholders who can engage with and support the project.

They represent project partners, individually or collectively, and justify by the diversity of perceptions and values the search for the meaning of the activity.

External stakeholders can be:

• Teachers from the same educational team, volunteers, ready to cooperate and set up, in the same class, in interdisciplinary, situations illustrating the chosen theme. The more teachers there are working on the same subject, the more diversified and meaningful the approaches will be for the pupils. In most of the videos produced, teachers of different subjects work together, bringing a different focus. If the team gathers around the same project, the pupils understand more the meaning and scope of the project. It is about creating learning situations and adapting teaching to develop tools.
• Teachers from other schools who have already worked on the subject come to talk about their experiences, the implementation of resources, the difficulties encountered, the reactions of pupils and colleagues, and the strengths and weaknesses identified. There are many tools in the field of education that have already been tested.
• Trainers or experts (paediatricians, educational science researchers): familiar with the topic: for example, for teacher training in the field of empathy and emotional intelligence. Teacher training reveals a preponderance of the disciplinary dimension compared to the time allocated to the promotion of emotional, sensory and social learning. The school still seems to be focused solely on the transmission of knowledge. Teachers do not have the opportunity, during their training, to develop professional and technical skills in the field of emotions. Yet it is clear that in order to prevent violence and ensure a calmer school climate and improve learning, it is important to educate people to recognise their own emotions.
• Non formal Educational staff: Non-formal education can act as a complement and support to the formal education system. It can provide different and varied activities for pupils at their own pace and enable teachers to better manage a group, for example.
• Coordinators and pedagogical advisers: they can discuss with the teachers the proposals made, in line with the reality of the classroom. They can also address the issue of the material conditions of the school to fine-tune the situations and make them operational.
• Parents: it is important to involve parents in practices that contribute to improving the school climate. Just as teachers need to get to know their pupils, so teachers need to get to know their parents. This ranges from meeting parents to informing them about the resource and involving them (training).