Life values in education

The “Values of Life in Education” program is a comprehensive values education program that seeks to provide guidelines and tools for the development of the whole person, recognizing that the individual is composed of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions.

It offers a variety of experiential activities and practical methodologies for teachers and facilitators to help children and young people to explore and develop 12 core personal social values: peace, respect, love, responsibility, responsibility, happiness, freedom, cooperation, honesty, humility, humility, tolerance, simplicity and unity.

It focuses on the teacher as an indispensable role model, providing an opportunity for students to explore and develop values and related personal, social and emotional skills. The programme offers training (education) to teachers, encouraging them to accept, listen and guide, rather than impose or moralise. To create a values-based environment in which together with their students they can think, reflect and interact equitably.

The main objectives of the programme are:

help individuals to think and reflect on different values and their practical implications, and to express them in relation to themselves, others, the community and the world at large,
deepen understanding of motivation and responsibility, with the aim of enabling students to make positive personal and social choices,
to inspire individuals to choose their own personal, social, moral and spiritual values and to know practical methods to develop and deepen them; and finally,
to encourage teachers and animators to consider education as providing a philosophy of life for students, thus facilitating the development of their emotional and social intelligence.

The implementation of the programme is based on the social and personal skills model, which aims to develop behaviours that promote psychosocial health. It makes use of experiential learning, which enables students to become actively involved in the acquisition of knowledge, to enhance their learning capacity and to become more responsible, so as to form a shared experience that can lead to actions towards social change in the school environment.
Its application to students requires the training of the coordinator-teacher on the material (15 hours) and the supervision of ELPIDA staff throughout the implementation (20 hours).

Experiences from the implementation of the programme

Important for me was the fact that often during the school process, they often referred back to the curriculum and values to manage tensions with each other or with other classmates. Through this type of experiential learning, the children adopted values that lay the foundation for the proper formation and enhancement of their personalities.

This programme, both in the design and in the implementation of the activities of each "value", aimed to activate the emotion of the group so that its members could think, feel and experience the values in an environment of relaxation, acceptance and safety.

Another element I would like to point out is the relationships between the teachers who participated in the two supervision groups. The teachers bonded with each other, got to know each other better and in this way were able to establish relationships of sympathy, appreciation and mutual respect. I make no secret of the fact that sometimes at the beginning of each meeting I felt boredom and tiredness, but strangely enough, within a few minutes all that had disappeared and was replaced by the interest and vitality of the new.

It was very pleasant. They were looking forward to it with anticipation and joy. They were curious and asked each time, "What value, madam, are we going to talk about today?"

With a variety of experiential activities we experienced the experience of each value through narratives, discussions, events, songs, games and expressed ourselves creatively through painting, dance, theatre or writing texts, poems and stories.

Structured educational workshops give tools to the teacher to help students acquire knowledge and skills, creating in the classroom a climate of acceptance, equality, democracy, teamwork, equal opportunities. In this environment, no pupil is 'left on the sidelines'.