- Kelly Grossthal
The aim of the project is to raise awareness about LGBT issues among public schools, school boards and school heads by creating an example of the handling of LGBT issues in three pilot schools. During the course of the project, the Estonian LGBT Association’s teacher training programme, which was started in 2012 and has undertaken 7 training sessions with more than 100 participants so far, will be developed further. The project would make it possible to expand upon the issues of gender identity and human rights framework in addition to working closely with three pilot schools – training teachers, supporting and helping the schools carry out informative activities dealing with bullying amongst the student body.
In the course of the project, three schools will be trained on the issues human rights, LGBT persons and school bullying, their strategic dicuments are analysed and they will be assisted in organising bullying-free week. The project ends with trainings to the heads of other schools to introduce the activities and experiences of the pilot project.
Activities in chronological order:
- developing the training scheme
- first round table discussion on the project with partners, representatives from non-governmental organisations and ministries
- finding pilot schools, one-day training sessions in each of the schools, and creating a working group for dealing with bullying prevention in the schools
- analysis of the pilot schools’ strategy documents in cooperation with the working groups from the viewpoint of bullying and LGBT issues in order to identify needs for change; carrying out focus group interviews at schools if needed to get a better understanding of what is needed in each school
- working group training sessions in each of the schools for improving and amending the school’s strategy documents
- school-specific activities aimed at the student body (e.g. an anti-bullying week)
- two training sessions aimed at school heads (in Tallinn and Tartu) where pilot schools can share their experiences. One of the goals of the training sessions is to find more schools willing to parti- cipate in school-wide training sessions and develop an anti-bullying strategy
- second round table discussion on the project with partners, representatives from non-governmental organisations and ministries to reflect on the project and make future plans