The objective of the WELL-BEING FOR ALL programme is to create a culture of WELL-BEING in the whole school community. A school culture of well-being is visible when their members behave in ways that emphasize the importance of caring for the mental well-being of their students and adults. Adolescents thrive in school environments that foster their need for connectedness, belonging, inclusion and competence. In the frame of the WELL-BEING FOR ALL programme, students review the UPRIGHT skills learned during the first year of the project in their daily life and put them in practice through the activities from the WELL BEING FOR ALL catalogue, supported by teachers. Well…this is what was expected to happen: a series of activities planned in the school’s premises and then opening up to the whole community.

As we all know, the Covid-19 outbreak forced all of us once again to be resilient, and so the UPRIGHT Consortium selected the activities that could fit better with this completely new situation. Some pilot sites could run activities before schools’ closure, in other sites schools were involved through online interaction. An intense dialogue was kept with schools during these months and the schools welcomed the UPRIGHT proposals with great enthusiasm and willingness to put themselves on the line. We are therefore pleased to present you the fruit of their labour within the activities: “Resilience in a photo” and “Cyber praising event”.

Resilience in photo

Here are the winnersIn Italy, the UPRIGHT local team published on the Facebook page of the project a call for “photos of resilience”. A voluntary online jury was created to select the best pictures. In line with a social resilience perspective, winning the contest brought a reward for the entire class. Three pictures were selected as the most representatives of the concept of resilience in the frame of the restrictions that, across Europe, we were ALL experiencing, due to Covid-19 pandemic.

In Denmark, students from 4 classes participated in the photo contest and made an exhibition on resilience. The teachers choose 4 main categories; responsibility (responsible decision making), communication (assertive communication strategies), Relations (relationship skills) and Conflicts (conflict resolution).

Each class were assigned one of these main categories and within each class, every student had to make a poster on his or her interpretation of e.g. resilience and responsibility or resilience and relationships. The students printed out their poster and hang them in a designated area. Mette and Louise, from the Danish team, and the school-manager were the jury: a winning class and a winning student from each of the classes were awarded. It was great fun.

Cyber praising event

In the Basque Country, students were asked to choose a person of the school community to praise and honour publicly, then they took a picture of the person, added a sentence of praising and shared it on a chosen media platform.

- Hello, I'm very proud of you, you got through the course with no problem. Keep it up! - Thank you pretty You learn quickly, as I do from you

 

 

 

 

 

A well-being school culture in UPRIGHT results from building a nurturing school environment that increases the individuals’ own ability to bounce back and also the collective resilience, which is making the school community support this. Facing the emergency of Covid-19 posed a big challenge: UPRIGHT schools turned it into an opportunity to feel connected as a community and mitigate all together with the impact of this event.

Sara Carbone, Silvia Gabrielli, Silvia Rizzi