Education represents the fundamental social phenomenon emerged once with the human society, specific to each social organization, fulfilling functions of informing and training the individual from an intelectual, moral, artistic and physical point of view.
In the contemporary society the education topic has developed new connotations caused by changes which occur in all fields of the social life. Education overcomes the limits of exigencies and national values and tends to universality, towards the common value heritage of humanity. Due to this reason a unitary curriculum cannot answer alone to human diversity, while the permanent education desideratum tends to become an undoubted reality.
The educational projects, generally speaking, have the largest interdisciplinary character, and offer the most efficient modalities of forming the children’s character ever since primary school-years, because the educational factors are those most appreciated and accesible to their hearts.
It is known that ever since the most tender age children accumulate an array of knowledge if they are brought into contact with objects and natural phenomena.
Children need to come into contact with actions meant to enlarge their spiritual world, to quench their cognitive thirst, to create for them opportunities in order to be able to feel strong emotions, to be able to nose around so that they would form durable convictions. These premises have been the foundation of this partnership with the police which I have set into motion throughout the 2014-2015 school year.
Through this setting in motion of the educational project in partnership ¨The Street – a friend or a foe¨ I have intended to teach the pupils how to avoid, or at least to reduce to a minimum, accidents in which the ¨little pedestrians¨ might get involved.
The project is a proof of the stimulating wish, development and perfection of those habbits of the pupils needed to self-protection and growth of the care towards their own self and of those surrounding them.
The activities proposed to be set in motion throughout the project have had as a specific form of development the direct meetings between children and the police agents, activities meant to impulse pupils to learn, to learn and to respect always the traffic rules on the public way, in their role of direct traffic participants, as well as the behaviour rules in the public transportation. The meetings with these specialized professionals have taken place both at school, where different traffic situations have been exemplified to the pupils spoken as well as through images, [both at school] and away right on the traffic ways, where pupils had to face specific situations and apply the newly formed habbits as to the following of the traffic rules.
A. GOAL AND OBJECTIVES
To know and follow the traffic rules and the guidelines of social conduct.
To increase the adaptation skill of the pupils to the traffic factors and conditions.
To develop those necessary attitudes regarding the correct decision making in order to achieve the self-protection.
B. BENEFICIARIES: PUPILS
C. EXPECTED OUTCOMES:
– To form real and correct traffic participants;
– To realize own portfolios, posters and expositions that include individual products of pupils regarding traffic on the public ways, with the corresponding characteristics.
D. DURATION: JANUARY – APRIL 2015
E. PROJECT ORGANIZATION
1. The Project Team
2. The Activity Programme:
– Preparation of the Activity
– Setting Responsabilities: method and theme
– Development of the Activity
– Evaluating the Activity: monitoring, centralizing, appreciation, measurement
3. Identifying the Resources: human, material, financial
F. THE PROJECT DISTRIBUTION: LOCAL COMMUNITY
The activity preparation consists of disseminating the project and its importance by launching the offer to the pupils and parents followed by the project promotion to the local community and the project participating institutions.
The development itself has been structured around four main themes:
1. ¨Do you know traffic?¨ – the initial pupil testing through a questionnaire by choosing the correct answer.
2. ¨The black street chronicle¨ – a meeting with traffic agents in order to present some materials about accidents in which little pedestrians were involved due to their lack of attention.
3. ¨The little pedestrian¨ – simulating the traffic participation by knowing and following the traffic rules during a gathering of pupils from the other grades.
4. ¨It is good to know how to react to any situation!¨ – a concrete activity of going on the public ways; recognizing the traffic signs; following the traffic rules and civic manners in the public transport.
The last stage of the project consisted of the evaluation of the activity through organizing a round-table discussion with the participation of collaboratos and beneficiaries with the goal of appreciating and measuring the concrete educational value of all activities, which have been developing thoughout this action.There have also been proposed retrievable measures in case of gaps discoveryof the cognitive level and the application of the adequate manners in traffic.
Through the four organized meetings of this project, the pupils have discovered that the police agent is a person that watches for our safety, a friend of those who follow the rules of this game called ¨traffic¨. The organized roll-plays have determined the pupils to discover the street from the perspective of the little police agent as part of the traffic patrol. Therefore, both the adult and the young police agents shook hands with each other and worked shoulder to shoulder.