Teaching Janusz Korczak. Learning and working with students and professionals

1. Teaching Janusz Korczak. Learning and working with students and professionals Lecture by Joop Berding Geneva International Seminar June 5 2010

2. Outline • The problem with ‘teaching Korczak’: ‘Seek your own way ….’; • Designing a training-course for workers in daycare and after-school care centers; • The implementation of the training-course; • Questions; • Evaluation and effectivity; • Follow-up: the brochure; • What next?

3. 1. The problem with ‘teaching Korczak’: • ‘Seek your own road ….’; • The (un)importance of method; • Some cornerstones.

4. Five key-concepts Respect Justice Participation Dialogue Self-reflection

5. 2. Designing a training-course for workers in daycare and after-school care centers • introducing Korczak: a name unknown; the problem of history (his story); • ‘personal’ theories of upbringing and education; • the video; • some literature to read and study; • working towards practical results.

6. 3. The implementation of the training-course • prior to the 1st training-session everyone reads an article on Janusz Korczak: kick-off assignment; • describe a situation in which a child showed respect for you, and one in which the child did not have respect for you, then the other way around; • where did you see the rights of the child in your own practice?; • we discuss a ‘case’ about the holiday-program in an after-school care centre; • take-home assignments.

7. Working together as a ‘team’ • Dialogue-ing • Prepare a presentation about ‘values’

13. 4. Questions We asked the participants to put down on paper questions about JK and to JK: esp. The last is interesting: ‘What would you like to ask Janusz Korczak?’  some examples: • what would you like to do if you lived now? • what would you do with my group that I cannot get under control? • does your view go back to your own childhood? • how did you deal with uncooperative colleagues? • why are you so obsessed with the rights of children?

14. Certificate

15. KO-rczak Nieuwsbrief • We published three times a special Korczak-Newsletter, with reflections by the participants, and texts by Korczak

16. 5. Evaluation and effectivity We evaluated the training-courses directly after the training-course. Our findings: • most participants highly valued the open atmosphere of the training-sessions; • most found the training inspiring; • the five key-concepts were found to be instructive, welcome ‘anchor-points’; • some people hardly feel any ‘connection’ to the life-story of Korczak; • some feel it is difficult to work according to Korczak; • in general, most feel they have discovered new ways of ‘looking at’ children.

17. After a year we interviewed seven workers from different centres; our findings: • ‘trust’ had become a core concept; • one group made new rules, and put them on the wall; • everyone’s ‘position’ in the group was clear; • children with disturbing behavior are not punished but given a ‘time-out’ period; • ‘friendship’ has become a topic of discussion between children; • much more participation of children in all-day activities; • workers make more use of their ‘intuition’ and factual knowledge of children; • there is a balance between freedom and things that have to be done.

19. 6. Follow-up: the brochure

20. Addresses • Janusz Korczak Stichting • Postbus 70048 • 1007 KA Amsterdam • www.korczak.nl • info@korczak.nl • www.joopberding.nl • jwa.berding@ziggo.nl