Call for Articles for Enabling Education Review Issue 6, 2017

The theme of the 2017 edition of Enabling Education Review will be:

“Young People’s Views of Inclusive Education”

The deadline for submitting first drafts of articles is 31 August 2017. Details of suggested topics and how to submit articles are provided below. Contact info@eenet.org.uk with any questions.

1. Why have we chosen this topic?In 2017, EENET is celebrating 20 years of promoting inclusive education and sharing experiences from around the world. Learners, particularly children and young people, are at the centre of inclusive education, but often their opinions are ignored. Therefore, EER 6 will focus on the voices of young learners. We want to know about their experiences of inclusive schools, classrooms or other education settings. We also want to see their visions and ideas for how to make education environments more inclusive.

2. What could children/young people submit?We are looking for both written submissions and drawings from children and young people under the age of 25 years.

A written submission could be in the style of an article or news report. We also welcome poems, songs, short fictional stories or even posters.

We would also like to receive lots of different drawings, including cartoon strips that tell a story, and maps showing the inclusive or non-inclusive parts of a school.

If you are a teacher, parent, youth worker or other person working with children and young people in education, you may need to provide them with some encouragement and support to write or draw a submission for EENET. However, it is important that you give the children and young people freedom to express their opinions. We have written a brief guide to help you with this.

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3. What could children/young people write or draw about?We would like to know about children and young people’s experiences of inclusive education and/or their ideas about making education more inclusive. This is a very broad subject.

The following are some ideas for topics:

They could write about themselves, e.g.: What makes you feel happy, safe or welcome in school? Who is your favourite adult at school? Why? When did you do something at school that made you proud of yourself? When do you feel left out of things at school? What are your dreams and hopes for the future? How does education fit into

these?

They could write about their experiences of school or another educational experience, e.g.: Describe a good teacher. What makes your school inclusive or accessible? Are there issues related to food, water, sanitation, or getting to and from school? Who helps you and who helps your teachers? Who are your friends at school? Why are they your friends? What is difficult about going to school? Why? What is fun about going to school? Why? Do you have a school council in your school? What do they do? Do you get consulted about what happens in your school? Describe something that happened in school that made you laugh.

They could write about inclusive education, e.g.: Begin or end your article with “For me, inclusion means...” Have you been involved in any campaigns to help children who are not in school

to get into education? Are sports or arts important to including people in school? Why? What stops you from going to school? Do you get to talk about how inclusive your school is? If so, explain.

They could write about their education experiences outside of school: Do you learn outside of school? If so, explain. What makes you really annoyed, frustrated or sad about education/school? Who are your heroes/heroines? Why? Or they could write about another personal experience of education.

If children and young people choose to write fictional stories (something made up, for instance describing their ideal school or a perfect lesson), please write a note on the submission to tell us that it is fictional.

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4. How can you submit a written piece or drawing?FormatWritten pieces can be submitted electronically as a Word document, or as plain text in an email message. Our email is info@eenet.org.uk. We also accept submissions via private message through our Facebook page.

Handwritten documents can be submitted. You can send original handwritten documents to us via post, or they can be scanned/photographed and emailed to us.

We are also happy to accept audio or video recordings, if the young authors want to read aloud what they have written and record it on a camera or phone. You can email us the audio/video file if it is small enough, or use a file-sharing site. Contact us if you need advice about sending us an audio or video file. Please ensure that the child and his/her parents/carers are aware that we may want to share the audio or video file on our website. If they agree, they should give you written permission for this.

Please ensure you include the name, age, grade, school and contact details for every child or young person who submits something.

LengthWritten pieces should be a maximum of 500 words. Photos and/or drawings can be sent to accompany the written piece.

EditingWritten pieces will be edited by EENET’s editors. Also a team of young people from different countries will be asked to read and comment on the written pieces and drawings.

PhotosIf you are sending photographs or scans of drawings to accompany written pieces, the images must be high resolution (the jpeg file should be at least 1mb in size). We may want to publish your photos in EER or on our website, so if the photos show people’s faces, please ensure you get permission from these people (or their parents/carers). We have included a simple permission form that you can adapt if you want to.

DrawingsWe need to ensure that drawings will reproduce clearly in EER. Please ensure that children and young people use black lines and bold colours for their drawings. Drawings in light pencil unfortunately will not reproduce clearly and we won’t be able to publish them.

DeadlinesThe first deadline for draft submissions of articles is 31 May 2017. But we welcome submissions as soon as possible so we can spread the editing workload. We will review all written pieces and work with the authors to edit them if necessary, and we will review and select drawings to publish.

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SelectionPlease note that we might not publish all of the written pieces and drawings we receive as we are limited by the length of the publication. We try to ensure that the final selection includes submissions:

from a variety of countries/regions about a range of different issues from authors/artists of different ages, abilities and educational levels.

Written pieces and drawings that are not selected for publication in EER may instead be published on EENET’s website (www.eenet.org.uk) or used on EENET’s Facebook page.

QueriesIf you have any questions, please email info@eenet.org.uk.

Postal addressIf you want to send a written piece or drawing in hard copy or as an audio recording (e.g. on CD), please send to:

EENETPO Box 422HydeCheshire, SK14 9DTUK

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Notes for facilitatorsThese notes are for teachers, parents, youth workers or others working with children and young people in education who want to support their youngsters to prepare a submission for Enabling Education Review.

There is no right or wrong way to write, photograph or draw a submission for Enabling Education Review. As long as the piece has been created by children or young people, either on their own or as a group, we want to see it.

We want to hear the voice of the children as authors of their own work. It is important that the facilitator guides the children and helps them to write their stories in their own words, but they must not tell children what to write. The facilitator should not tell them the story is wrong – the child is free to write any story they want, real or fictional. We do need to know from the facilitator if a story is fictional

The facilitator can correct spelling mistakes, etc. if they want, although this is not essential as we will edit the article. However, they must not correct the story or tell the child to change the story.

Facilitation ideas

The following suggestions may help you facilitate a writing session. This is not the only way to run a session, but offers some ideas to get started.

Before the children and young people start to write or draw, you could run a fun workshop to help get their ideas flowing. Here are some ideas that may help you.

1. Warming up activities

A round of names Ask each child to introduce themselves by telling everyone their name and an

adjective that describes them best. For example, “Hi! I am Honest Henry” or “I’m Mischievous Max”.

What similes can they think of? For example, “as big as an elephant” or “sing like an angel”.

Group stories The facilitator says the first sentence in a story. Ask a child in the group to decide the next sentence in the story. Then ask each child in turn to add a sentence to the story.

2. Discussion

You could use one or more of the warm up ideas above to lead into a discussion. To stimulate the discussion, you could ask the children questions such as:

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What are your favourite stories? What do you like about these stories? Who are the key characters? Why do you like them? How do these characters remind you of characters in your own lives?

3. Creating a story

You can use the discussion to develop the children’s ideas for how they could construct their articles or other written pieces.

Short story shares Ask the group to share short stories about things in their lives. This could include: their families their best friends their best achievement their best dreams their best teachers what they enjoy or dislike about school.

You can add more questions from the list of topic ideas in the EER6 call for articles.

Create a story/article Ask children to follow the steps below to create a story – factual/real-life or

fictional. You could ask them to do this as a group and write a group submission for EER.

Or they could do this as a group activity before starting to write their own individual stories. Or they could just go straight into writing on their own individual stories.

The steps are:1) Set the scene. 2) Describe the main character. 3) Describe any other characters. 4) Do they have friends or enemies? Please describe them. 5) What is the challenge currently being faced by the main character? What problems do they face with going to school or joining in the classes?6) What has the character or other people done to overcome the challenges? 7) What has been the result? 8) What else could they try or do they want to try to overcome the challenges?

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Permission form (sample for adaptation)

Child’s name:

Child’s school:

Child’s teacher’s name:

Date:

has been working with other children in his/her class to prepare a submission for an education publication called “Enabling Education Review”. This publication is read by teachers, parents, and others around the world. The publication focuses on the issue of inclusive education. It is published by an organisation called EENET – Enabling Education Network.

As part of this activity, is featured in a photo / video / audio recording (delete as appropriate).

We need the child’s parent or carer to give permission for the photo / video / audio recording to be submitted to EENET and potentially used in Enabling Education Review, or on their website: www.eenet.org.uk.

Please fill in and sign to give your permission:

Parent’s/carer’s name:

I agree that EENET may use the photo / video / audio recording of my child in its publication Enabling Education Review and on its website.

Signed:

Date:

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