Lifelong Learning Programme

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Success Stories

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TITLE OF THE SUCCESS STORY
Give Me A Hand Teacher
COUNTRY WHERE IT TOOK PLACE
Turkey
AUTHOR OF THE SUCCESS STORY
Parent
SCHOOL TYPOLOGY
Primary school
THEMATIC AREA
Integration of immigrants students
DESCRIPTION OF THE SUCCESS STORY
Berfin is the eldest girl of a family with 5 children. They live in Bingöl with father, mother, brothers and sisters and grandma. For the aim of earning more money, the father finds a better job in Istanbul and they move there as whole family. They give up everything in Bingöl for a new life. They settle in a very old house in Usküdar. They register Berfin to the nearest school to their house. She likes learning very much, carry her dreams in her eyes, the eyes that shows her hopes related to the future, shines no more as it does in village. She witnesses to nothing that makes her happy, though days pass since she started school. People around her look at her like she comes from space. Nobody, including teachers, can get used to Berfin’s accent and appearance. She has troubles with teachers in communication. Classmates always make her ashamed and humiliate her because of different features of her. All of these things ruin the nature of Berfin. At home, she behaves badly, attacker and at the same time she is in great sadness. She begins to lose her self-confidence, cannot explain herself and describes her feelings, is afraid of talking to peers and adults. The economic power of the father is not enough and someone should support him in terms of economic needs. The mother cares younger children and grandma, so Berfin has to earn money, she cannot go to school. Her father has enough reason for not sending her to school; her grades are very low since they come Istanbul. They think that Berfin doesn’t accept this decision, but she does, because she is already unhappy at school. She started to work in a confection workshop. The nonattendance of Berfin has attention of guidance teacher Mr. Nuri. In order to follow her, he negotiates with her friends and other teachers. Everybody say similar things “We don’t know anything about her because she is a new comer and her dropping out is a good thing for us, because she couldn’t walk in the same way with us”. Mr. Nuri learns her address and visits them. At first visit, he meets Berfin’s mother, Mrs. Emine, but they cannot contact each other because she cannot speak Turkish. He has to come back with the questions in his mind, decides to visit them again. A day later, in the evening, he sees beautiful Berfin who tries to repair her shoes with a needle. He watches her for long time. As if she sews Mr. Nuri’s heart, not shoes. He thinks that how he cannot unaware of a student lives under such a bad circumstances. He sits near her and says only ‘I apologize’… As for Berfin, she can only say ‘ I wish’… They sit for a while without talking to each other but they speak without words. The father goes out and they meet, go to a coffee and talk about events and situations. There are some cautions in order to get better the problems of Berfin’s family. One of them is economic support and another one is enable Berfin to come to school again. Mr. Ömer promises him if the economic problems are solved, he would send Berfin to school again. Mr. Nuri hopes that he can finish their problems. A week later, Mr. Ömer begins to work at school as a security staff. They give them a new house belongs to school, it means that they solved many of problems. There is only one and the biggest matter, Berfin, she should go where she belongs to. However Berfin makes Mr. Nuri feel that this is not so easy like the other problems. To accustom herself to conditions and people is very hard work for her. Owing to the Mr. Nuri’s efforts and guidance teacher’s insistence on her, she decides to come back school. The efforts by teachers and Mr. Nuri in order to make distance minimal between Berfin and her friends both at school and social environment after the school, work fast. During this time, Mr. Nuri discovers the ability of Berfin at running and prepares her for athleticism races. In a short time, she wins prizes at running and announces her school’s name in province and county. The story that begins in Bingöl and goes on in Istanbul, goes on with her winning Gazi University, Department of Physical Education and Sports. She is studying at third class at Gazi University now.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
The teacher interests in nonattendance of Berfin and owing to address based system, he could visit family at their house, find out and tell the problems, so he could find alternative solutions to the problems. The willingness of teacher, the possible and appropriate approaches of the family, not closing the doors for the offers, all of them make the social differences minimal between families. So, the relations of brotherhood, friendship and teammate become powerful. Especially in order to empower the relations between the normal families or students and migrated families or students, the teachers should be bridges that enable them to build effective, powerful relations and make the differences minimal. The reasons of this success story; following the nonattendances with the help of Adey system, being aware of this responsibilities and spending time for Berfin, the willingness of Berfin for learning new things and education, the response of the family when they learn that teacher attach importance to Berfin. If the students can be observed during their whole life, it would keep the relation between family, student, teacher and school, dynamic. If any possible problem is faced, it can renew and fixes itself, at that point, control mechanism would be more effective. At schools, in addition to teachers give academic information, guidance and psychological service departments should be active and when a following and observation problem is come across, finding permanent solutions can be very effective about nonattendance problems. While the positive behaviors and approaches of teachers make positive effect on students, the oppressive behaviors, deficient communication, expecting students to make works that they cannot do, can lead to undesirable results like nonattendance problems. For this reason, schools should be social areas that students can live. If a student comes from different school, their files and former situation should be examined and the possible problems that can be seen in time can be limited or solved easily. Social activities must be applied in order to provide them required situation, their needs and problems must be answered and solved. Moral support should be given them.

20 December 2014

Final Partners’ meeting

The fourth partners’ meeting took place in Florence (IT) on 15 December 2014. The meeting had the objective to check the activities carried out since the third meeting of the project and share and assess the in progress results. A special focus has been dedicated to the presentation of the strategies to solve the case scenarios.