Description of organisation

Our organization is a school for children from 1st to 9th grade (6 - 15 years old) called ScioŠkola. We are not a traditional Czech school. We were inspired by democratic schools all around the world, for example, Sudbury Valley in the USA, Escola da Ponte in Portugal. We are establishing our very own system of education where children are getting more and more responsibility for their education as they're getting older. Our main goal is to prepare children for life in a changing world of the future. At our schools, children are partners and are given the freedom and responsibility that suits them. We encourage children to take responsibility for their education and to actively shape their own lives. We are trying to help them discover and develop their strengths.

There are a principal and a deputy headteacher, a secretary, 6 full-time teachers, 3 part-time teachers and 3 after-school teachers. There is one office where we work and prepare our lessons. One room that we use for staff meetings, parents meetings or just to be alone in peace and quiet. The team is very strong, supportive, and respectful. In our school is approximately 70 children in 4 classes. Children are divided into classes according to their competencies, soft and hard skills. 1- 2 graders in class “Smrk”, 2-3 graders in class “Kněhyne”, 4-6 graders in class “Travný”, 6-8 graders in class “Ostry”. These classes were named after local mountains.
Our town is surrounded by beautiful Beskydy mountains that are very attractive for sports enthusiasts and nature lovers. There is a lot of history to see as well. Every year we organize skiing trips for the children. The younger children attend swimming lessons every year too. We are located in a building with other schools and we have a good relationship with them. In our area are shops, restaurants, bus stops, and the town center is 10 minutes within the walking distance. Our town (56 000 citizens) has very good city transportation but everything (shops, mall, libraries, restaurants, center…) is easy to reach by foot. Each of the school members has a specific role and task depending on our pedagogical field, personality, or talents. We meet once a week for two hours to discuss the weekly issues regarding curriculums, organizational plans, individual classes, field trips, or other logistics. For some parts of the process, we even invite children to join us at our meetings. Volunteers are more than welcome to join us at our meetings to become a part of our team.

At the beginning of each school year, everybody at the school is invited to “adaptation week” where we get to know each other better (great opportunity for new pupils/staff). Our school starts at 8:30 and finishes at 12:15 or 15:00, depending on the class. Three days out of the week are reserved for lessons like Math, Communication, English, Writing, Reading. One day of the week is “Field trip day”. We visit exhibitions, shows, libraries, lectures, or take trips to nature. It all depends on the season and programs in our town or nearby area. One day of the week is dedicated to self-study to work on children’s projects or challenges and school meetings where we present projects, ideas, or deal with rule-breaking.

Children attend lessons where they can work on the level they need to and then they choose from several projects.We encourage children to cooperate with each other across different age groups in “No borders” days and projects based on different topics. So practically the older children can help the young ones with learning. We are working with "goals" and "challenges" that allow the students to study in their own way and pace with our assistance. Some of the "challenges" help them get ready for high school entrance exams, some of them might give them ideas for their individual projects. Children usually spend at least 4 hours per week working on their "challenges" and individual projects. We have no marks at our school and only evaluation process that consists of students' self- evaluation, teachers' commentary, and then regular parent-teacher-student meetings twice a year. All children and other school members are responsible for a certain area of our school so they are involved in taking care of it. Our children also have the option of attending an afterschool club, there is usually a variety of possible afternoon activities for them or they just spend their time playing together inside or outside of our school in the playground. We really like field trips (Thursday is our field trip day) as they allow both children and adults to learn from real situations and to spend more time together across different age groups. You can enjoy the community of all Czech ScioŠkola around the whole country. We organize national gatherings twice a year. Also, we do exchanges between various cities of teachers but children as well. Websites of our school: https://frydek.scioskola.cz/

Inclusion topics

This organisation is willing to involve volunteers who face situations which make their participation in activities more difficult, from the following categories for different types of project:

• Cultural differences
• Geographical obstacles
• Social obstacles