Shocking Democracy LogBook

Pestalozzi programme
Module A – Strengthening Education for Democracy
“Shocking Democracy”
18 th of January – 10 th of February 2017
1° Istituto di Istruzione superiore “Archimede” di Rosolini Trainer: Maria Celauro

1 st Meeting – 18 th of January 2017
“I look at me”
Even if the training was planned for 15 teachers, involving my colleagues, I didn’t felt at ease to
make a selection…so…thanks to my principal’s wise advice, I decided to accept all those who were
interested in….
Many of them arrived…….and little by little the classroom…was full of teachers staring at me….
1° Istituto di Istruzione superiore “Archimede” di Rosolini Trainer: Maria Celauro

After panicking a bit…I introduced the main topic of the training course and of the first meeting.
The title of this first meeting – “I look at me” - represents well the aim of the planned activities: to
point out those prejudices of ours which influence our way of approaching other people.
First of all, I asked my colleagues to think about a mistake they had made while working as
teachers.
Then we watched together this video: (Click on the image)
The video tells the story of a elementary teacher who makes a mistake on purpose while
explaining the multiplication table of nine.
Her students start laughing because she was wrong only once.
The moral of the story is that it is very common to be judged for the only mistake you made, even
if the rest is correct.
1° Istituto di Istruzione superiore “Archimede” di Rosolini Trainer: Maria Celauro

Then I asked my colleagues to think about how often we have evaluated our students focusing on
their mistakes instead of emphasizing the good qualities or aspects of their performances!
Maybe because it wasn’t asked…but some of us started telling about the mistakes we had made
and how we felt facing students’ evaluation.
Obviously, school for us is a point of reference and if I should represent my mood and the path we
have to follow during our training…well I would choose this image:
The Hive stands for our school … but the bees need to fly far from it …so our reflection has to start
from our school experience, but then we have to go furtherer…involving our deepest beliefs.
Then I proposed to play at the “neighbourhood yard”:
First teachers closed their eyes and I put on their forehead some little arrows of different colours.
Two of them were left without coloured spots. When I told them to open their eyes, to look
around and then to do what they felt to….they gathered forming groups of the same colours……..
1° Istituto di Istruzione superiore “Archimede” di Rosolini Trainer: Maria Celauro

Then I asked them if someone wanted to change his/her group…but nobody wanted to
move….and then I remarked that the people without the arrows had been left alone………………..
So, everybody agreed that they didn’t want to move because they felt protected by their group
and they felt sorry about those who didn’t belong to any group…but most of the teachers didn’t
know what to do with them…
Then, starting from this issue, I invited my colleagues to think about how our students should feel
when they meet their class mates for the first time: we consider them as a group, but as a matter
of fact they aren’t a group yet and, as far as we can know, maybe they will never become a “class
group”.
Thus, to make our students sensitive towards a democratic approach, we should put in place some
strategies in order to help them to interact each other correctly and to avoid this sort of
stagnation and immobility, which usually causes the birth of closed groups.
Then I proposed to play at the “Exchanging gifts”.
I asked the trainees to imagine they have to do a gift to a person whom they care for….Well this is
the result:
Many teachers for the training and…as a consequence….many gifts on the board!!
We started playing…..
1° Istituto di Istruzione superiore “Archimede” di Rosolini Trainer: Maria Celauro

And in the end…..very few gifts were left!!!
Yes! Asking around what they had received many gifts weren’t mentioned and to tell the truth
nobody knew why so many and valuable gifts had ….. disappeared?!
Many hypothesis were made, but then it came out that maybe there had been a gap…..because
the teachers had been very attentive and involved while giving their first gift but then they hadn’t
paid enough attention to the gift they were receiving and giving…and in the end some of them had
forgotten the task too.
The gap, we mentioned above, is just a fault in listening to what other people are saying, which is
a very common fault….but how can we pretend to understand others without listening to them?
How can we pretend to welcome them if we prevent ourselves to establish a contact?
After posing these questions, the teachers were asked to fill the tables for monitoring the impact
of the course.
1° Istituto di Istruzione superiore “Archimede” di Rosolini Trainer: Maria Celauro

The same tables can be found among the resources on the online platform,
where we wait for comments on the activities of the first meeting.
1° Istituto di Istruzione superiore “Archimede” di Rosolini Trainer: Maria Celauro