The social pedagogic daytime offer provided by Sjakket adresses young between 11 to 17 years.
The daytime offer is tailor-made for those young, that cannot function in the established school-offers, including both the danish public school as well as alternative schools. Our way is to create other educational frameworks than what the young previously have been used to. All in all it is about strenghtening the young, their self-esteem and self-confidence in a positive manner, where the essence is, gaining success as opposed to negative past experiences. These successes are defined on a day-to-day basis and on overall goals such as 9th grade final examination. In general, our internal offer haven't got to do with preventive efforts, but are instead an education and repairing of the young, where we seek to give them the tools to return to society with better possibilities at hand. The young that have ended up here with Sjakkets daytime offer, have different backgrounds and different reasons, for slipping out of the established offers.
The definition of their problems is:
· Lack of success and positive experiences in school auspices.
· Lack of insight and relation from parents.
· Lack of positive communication with, and understanding of the adults, which they have met in the public system.
· Seeks success through small-scale crime and streetlife in general.
· Due to the creation of self-esteem and safety, they're easy victims to the established criminal environments.
· Creates group-safety with those other young, that feels as bad as themselves.
In our work, we try to brake the downward going spiral, which the young has come to be in (se above). Our considerations towards the pedagogical frames for the young consists of:
· The pedagogy is the backspine of the teaching, hence there's allways a social-worker present in the classroom, so that the teacher solely relates to the professional issue of teaching. This, we do in order to get rid of the image and those memories that the young carry with them from their previous school attendance, marked by conflicts with the teachers.
· Focus on the positive sides in the young, which we observe and try to support for a healthier self-esteem.
· Paying allowance, as a pedagogical tool, which has two functions – as a carrot and stick approach. Simultaneously, it serves as a kind of crime-preventing precaution, since it no longer becomes necessary for them to engage in crime in order to acquire the objects they need and wish for. In this manner, we close the gates for them to become easy victims for criminal environments.
· To maintain and create a positive relationship between youth and parents, that is to invite and inform the parents frequently about the positive experiences we have with their young. We try to remove the negative image, which they have been given of their child. We try to create a healthier relation between the parents and the young among others by compliance with the agreements being entered.
· Organise tours when the young have proven themselves over a longer period, and excursions which have a professional and educational purpose to strengthen the professional school attendance.
· Normalize and structure their everyday in relation to steady meeting times and meals, which is why they recieve breakfast and lunch every day.
· We have an associated carreers teacher to our daytime offer, whom is able to follow the young until the age of 19.
Our experiences from the last 8 years of teaching young, as a part of our daytime offer, has taught us that the 15-year-olds which start with us, professionally and socially speaking corresponds to the levels of a 10-11 years old. Hence, it is necessary for both schools and social centres quickly to react when they observe the young that cannot comply with the frameworks of the public school system, and even before the young begins to experience negative successes as a substitute to the absence they have in their everyday school auspices. Therefore, we have chosen to lower our target group for the school to 11 years-old, where we're able to meet and reach them before it's too late.
The external offer
Sjakkets preventive work in Mjølnerparken for the youth between 6-18 years and their parents under the name of Integration Through Education.
We've created a very targeted, useful and sensible after school-offer with the pedagogical considerations to maintain a positive and successful future for the youth, which live in the exposed areas, ghettoes in the common tongue. These have a high concentration of youth lacking possibilities, including after school-offers for the youth.
The goal of Sjakkets work is and has been:
1. Create after school activities. Create good after school possibilities for the youth inside and outside of Mjølnerparken. Create safe boundaries with a possibility for good contacts to adults.
2. Open guidance, both individually and for groups. Guidance is given related to personal issues, education, work, family, democratic rules etc.
3. We teach the youth to believe in themselves, take notice of their surroundings and be open to make use of the possibilities at hand.