School communication tool

Description

As a school we have students from different ethnic backgrounds, experiences and genders. Our mission is to deliver them the best education possible coupled with improved social interactions for social learning and diversity acceptance. Our challenge is to find an effective and simple tool to assist our teachers to improve social integration and acceptance of diversity as well as gender equality.

With the increasing use of social media and generation of digital natives, children are being exposed to an increasing amount of negative content in regards to immigration, cultural diversity and gender. Educators at schools find it challenging to deliver positive values to students in a simple way that effectively allows children to learn and process the value of diversity for integration, empathy and equality.

We believe that teaching positive values is essential for educating children today. If we can’t find the right tool and/or solution to deliver these values, we are in danger of creating a future society that perpetuates institutionalised discrimination and a negative image of both diversity and gender.

To achieve this, we require a tool that can help our educators nourish the manners of diversity in society and gender equality, as well as to help them empathise with each other’s experiences.

Target

Our organisation is Futuraskolan International School of Stockholm, located in Stockholm, Sweden. The group we will target is the student body within our school. Our specific target groups are Grade 5 and Grade 8. We feel these students would be great leaders and role models for the rest of our student body and are at an age and transition phase in which this extra support would be incredibly valuable to their learning. Positive change within the student body should create additional positive downstream effects within the international community within Stockholm, with future implementation at other schools. And if the right tool will succeed at our school, it can be used in other schools in Stockholm and then in Sweden to make a major impact.

Competencies

1 - Our organization’s vision is that every child is visible, challenged and successful.
The school is designed to serve the children of the international community posted in Sweden and offers all classes in English, with the exception of modern language courses. 

MISSION - Futuraskolan International School of Stockholm strives to develop students who are internationally minded, generous in spirit and imbued with a sense of community service founded on respect.

2 - We have been working on implementing improved systems for the teaching diversity, gender equality and empathy amongst our students since the establishment of our school. 
Now, due to the rise of social media use and alternative technological educational tools, developing new channels to engage the students has proved to be imperative.

3- The champions are our educators, especially for grade 5 where we notice that students start to interpret their social understanding into actions in their daily life.

Innovation

It is important to introduce ideas and solutions that are different to support the learning
needs and challenges of our student community. If we could access one tool to help the teachers communicate with students and provide the same or improved social education, that would be the best solution in going forward.

We would like our students to develop empathy toward their peers at school and to have a greater understanding of social differences of people around the world. Our student body is culturally diverse and understanding and accepting this is the first step to preventing potential conflicts or misunderstandings. Our goal is to improve empathy and gender equality by opening students’ and teachers’ eyes to the similarities and differences within all of us.

Commitment

As a school we can support the solutions with our time, some staffing, students, and other resources needed to test the technology. We also view to support the solution by publicising the issues of gender inequality, social integration and diversity to our school community, alongside being an ambassador for the chosen solution so that everyone can work together to use this learning at school and at home and benefit from the positive impact.

We are committed to finding and testing a solution with the goal of implementation across our school’s educational system. With a long-term perspective, we are willing to provide ongoing resources and support in order to co-create a tool that receives a good response from our teachers and students, and shows measurable results. We have 9 schools in Sweden that the solution can be further implemented in should our school’s pilot project be successful which will ensure a continuation of the cooperation for a number of years.

Compliance

Yes, the challenge complies with the ethical standards of the project agreement. It does not raise any ethical issues at societal level.