Dimitrij Banda, Osnovna šola Naklo, Naklo
Paper addresses example of creating and nursing positive school environment for pupils and teachers, based on preventive educational upbringing program. The main goal stressed in the field of positive psychology was to encourage pupils to work on their social skills, but not just in the classrooms, also as a way of living. Our idea was to decrease all the unwanted events, enhance emotional intelligence and social skills and to create better school climate. In school year 2015/15 Primary school Naklo and schools from Italy, Turkey and Lithuania cooperated in Erasmus+ project, connected with ideas of positive psychology and positive schools. According to questionnaires we noticed lower satisfaction with our ways of upbringing among pupils, teachers and parents. First we wanted to elevate the competence of teachers in the field of educational upbringing, acquire power for the teachers in order to act efficiently and appropriately. With pupils we wanted to improve social and emotional intelligence, increase positive attitude of parents towards educational upbringing and improve satisfaction with the school in all target groups. In one school year all in the project involved schools prepared several activities, that connected teachers, pupils and parents. During lessons we had several workshops for pupils about empathy, emotional intelligence, cooperation, synergy, recognizing emotions, later we connected this with real life situations. We invited pupils, teachers and parents to do acts of kindness. In three bonding days pupils celebrated Earth day, love and friendship day and Europe day. They prepared their best verses, universal lines about love and friendship, and thoughts in different European languages, they danced and played. On the school open day each class proved power of synergy and prepared program for parents. They tried to win a reword and opportunity to attend the final celebration party, where we celebrated our success. At the end of school year we compared beginning and final questionnaire, done by pupils, parents and teacher and we realised that we managed to make a difference – with thoughtful, theoretical and on situation based learning and speaking the same language in school and at home we created positive school climate. Next year we will upgrade our work.
