The end of our trip in space and time

It's time to go. It's time to start new trips and new adventures. This was a nice trip, but, as everyone knows, each project has an adequate time and our time is passed. This will be my last post.

During more or less one year and a half we have been doing this journey. A lot of people were with us in the way. That's why this was a nice adventure and that is the main reason because I will miss this trip. We've been together discovering the way peoples of different parts in Europe and people of different ages think about love and sex and their specific way of behavioring in what concerns to sex.
It was a big challenge to face this delicate subject. From the begining it was clear that this is a subject that some populations face in a shy way or, at least, they don't talk about it in a confortable way. That's why some partners had an enthusiastic involvement in the beginning, but it wasn't necessary a long time until they realise that they were in trouble, because they didn't feel confortable, or because their school leadership (or the students or the parents) didn't feel confortable driving their eyes inside sexuality. This could have been a reason for us to give up this project. Some of us gave up. But the others stood. For the ones who stood, they realised that if some cannot stay in this project, that is a reason to investigate this subject at school work. It can't be a part of us which we ignore, because it is a part of us with a lot of influence in our lives.
We are finishing this project. Everything must be reviewed, of course. In this blog you can find what we've done. A lot of work should follow. We will see if we can come back to develop the project. For now we will make a pause.
In the top of this blog you can find links to the pages in which main activities developed in our project are detailed.
In order to perform the project, we've choosen freedom as a basic value. During this project time, this year and an half, we lived in a deeply transforming world , some of us changed their mission in their school, others saw the groups of students they teach be replaced. So, it was important the adaptability of the project activities to his school reality. We accept this, if the essencial goals were kept. This way, it was possible to drive our work to a deeper level. Each teacher worked with his students. Students debated the subject, talked with teachers, with friends and with relatives. It was the best way to avoid sex tabu. Publishing posts about the developed activities gave us the oportunity to know what partners were doing in the project and allowed us to compare ideas/values and discuss on them.
As a last word, I want to thank everybody who was in our «trip in space and time». It was a pleasure to be with you all. I'm specially grateful to Maria because of her intense and wise work.

Best regards from Portugal!

reflecting on our project

When I joined this project, a year and a half ago, I had my doubts about how such a delicate issue as sexual education at schools could be worked out in an etwinnning project. Jorge’s leadership in this trip proved that when teachers want, they can!

The project was extended in two school years, during which I had different positions at school and thus I worked in different ways.  The first year I worked with a specific group of students, meeting in the school library and talking (the photo shows our group during a meeting). We collaborated very well in the activities and writing the chain story, where students revealed aspects of sexual behavior in our area. That story was a starting point of a lot of discussions.  I won’t refer to the importance of such discussions, as my partners here have already mentioned them and I fully agree with them.

During the second year I worked in collaboration with another teacher in my school. We had the chance then to reach a wider audience and collect finally questionnaires from them.  Students tend to be shy to participate in such projects although they admit the importance of them. The use of English language during the second year was a problem but we decided not to give up but be flexible. We focused on the core aim of this project, that was discussing, thinking, and opening our mind in issues of sexual education. I gave students the chance to talk, even though their points of view were not recorded. Every question of our questionnaire was the starting point of discussions that made them all reflect on sexual behavior. It was also interesting to see the similarities and differences in thinking with students from other countries. Our school year ended early, so we didn’t have the time to discuss the results with my students. We will do it next school year, as the trip into human sexual behavior seems it’s never ending.

Sexual education in schools is a very delicate issue and a taboo for many teachers. With this project I was feeling not alone. I had Jorge and the other partners sharing with me worries and ideas. I’m grateful for that.

Thank you Jorge!

Maria

from the Greek team

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Mabel's Evaluation of the "Trip"

It was a privileged for me to participate in this trip. Unfortunately my contribution was brief due to many school work I had to do, but it was an enriching experience for me and for my students.

They felt challenged to participate in such a project, where older students, from different nationalities, shared their opinions about topics that also concern(ed) them. They felt they were not alone in this piece of paradise that is Portugal, but that there were several links of interest, worries, frustrations, fears and feelings among all these youngsters that could be discussed together.
The use of the English language was a problem to my students. They told me many times they wouldn’t be able to write directly to the blog whatever they wanted because they feared not to be able to write in perfect English. Probably (I hope) I made them realize or led them to reflect about the need to learn and use foreign languages. People need to communicate with each other and whenever we start something new,( that comes out of our routine) it is always hard .

So this trip in space and time allowed my students to give their first steps into a project like this and it really gave them the possibility to understand more about themselves and about the others. Moreover they also felt that it is very important to talk about issues that, many times, are still kept as tabus.

I do think etwinning projects are a wonderful tool to learn and to bring closer Europeans creativity and knowledge. Teachers and students have the chance to develop a collaborative work, working out together a lot of skills in real context and building up projects that are done according to student’s needs, what enhances highly their and our development.
As I love trips I hope to share my knowledge and work experience with this full of potential space and I expect to do it many more times…

To finish, I would like to congratulate Jorge Rocha and the other members of the project for this amazing work.

Classes debating questionnaire data

Click para obter esta informação em Português (click here to get this information in portuguese)
The last activity I developed with my students was an important step of the journey in space and time. This activity consisted of a debate on the survey results.

It was a dynamic debate, as it was supposed to be: sexuality is a matter really complex and, because of that, there are a lot of opinions about the way it must be lived. To judge everyone’s attitude towards sexuality requires to understand in a deep way the reasons and motives of everyone. Thus, before presenting to the students a moralizing and formatter speech, we think we should try to discover the experience of each one, every ethical understanding which is designing the personality of each of our students.

Consequently, sexual education cannot be done through monologues in which teachers assume the role of experts (anyway teachers are not experts in sexuality subjects).

I don’t want to remove teachers' authority. They will keep it, but they must express it in a sensible, sensitive and responsible way. With this teachers' profile, students will trust in their teachers and, at the same time, they will not create the illusion that teachers hold a knowledge out of doubt, something like a divine revelation that allow him to be certain and indisputable. Differently, teachers with this profile will point out that those who say they are illuminated are usurpers and are trying to take off everyone the noble responsibility to find your way.

Sexuality is the territory of the typical argumentative confrontation. There are sensitivities, cultures, values in confrontation, confrontation of everything that define the individuality of each one. It is a confrontation that is a game that to be civilized and sustainable has to be transparent in what concerns to the integrity and specificity of each one.


In the name of transparency and integrity, school sex education should make a decentralized approach, plural, inclusive, but not relativistic. The discussion of sexuality, such as the experience of sexuality, should tolerate and seek to understand all points of view, provided it remains untouched respect for others, untouched their integrity. For this reason the survey data were discussed in open classes, one meeting of the students of the class (in one case, it was possible to join two classes in the same lesson), class directors, other teachers of the classes and a representative of parents.

During an initial consideration, they were told that the data presented were not collected with scientific methodology; in these circumstances, everything we wanted was to stimulate the discussion and the starting point was the presentation of statistical data drawn from information gathered through the questionnaires (data published in previous posts in this blog).

To read more detailed information about debates with different classes click here.

A trip in (inner)space and time

Vincent Van Gogh, Shoes

It seems that there are trips we have to do deep inside (ourselves) to realize how different lives are. The trip I have been doing with my students for 2 years now has been tough but it has also been an enriching experience. They have taught me a lot about the meaning of life! I must confess that it’s been a truly “trip in (inner)space and time”
There are a wide variety of factors that can lead students to specific behaviour. As Jorge so clearly said, the environment and living conditions, the lack of family values and rules make my students face the dark side of life since early ages. They just live with feelings of rejection and anger and these feelings are reflected in their everyday lives: at school, with peers, with boy/ girlfriends, in sex, etc( of course that this is not a blind rule because there are some that don’t follow the path).
When life is so difficult, emotions are expressed in a not so beautiful way…

Mabel's Testimony - the value of sex in Lisbon sorroundings

Well, I work with students that are between 12 and 15 and I must tell you that the data shown in the questionnaire doesn’t surprise me in some fields. First of all, a great percentage of my students start their sexual life very early. In my opinion that happens due to many factors:
-their families don’t have an effective role ( a lot of parents have several jobs and aren´t at home, others have parents with social problems like drug addiction or they are even in jail and others don’t care at all about their children). The example they have at home is sometimes extremely hard to live with. My school has a considerable percentage of cases of abortion. This year I had some students from the 9th grade that had an abortion. The way students and their mothers reacted was amazing for me because it seemed as if they were talking about teeth extraction without psychological consequences;
-physical and psychological violence is also present among my students. They aren’t mature enough to understand the dimension and the importance of sex in their lives. Sometimes they use sex as a reflex of what they are used to live and watch at home and sometimes as a weapon used (without having that conscious) against themselves ;
- the concept of intimacy is changing among youngsters. In the past the first sexual intercourse happened later and it was something special, to share our intimacy with somebody we were in love with or that we loved. Nowadays, as Jorge said, it’s like a game or in my opinion just a way of having quick fun. They just do it and don’t think much about it. What is interesting to analyze is that this behavior is happening also with girls.
Sex and love is falling apart and this fact brings inevitably more problems to teens and future adults.