Peace Education

A Transatlantic Educator Dialogue Project

This website was created by 7 enthusiastic educators from the United States, Italy, Finland, Greece and Poland, who took part in the Transatlantic Educators Dialogue (TED) Alumni Program of the European Union Center of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As rightly stated on the program’s website (https://europe.illinois.edu/ted/), it is a “one of a kind opportunity for educators in the USA and the EU to come together online for shared exploration and examination of a variety of educational topics.”

Initially, this group focused on peace education. Aware of the significance and fragility of societal friendship and harmony, they embarked on the creation of a website where materials, student projects and lesson plans related to peace would be collated, created and shared. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic shook up our world, the educators realized that finding inner harmony is as vital. In addition to peace-related resources, they decided to include sections on Mindfulness and Finding (Inner) Peace.

They conducted a survey on educators’ well-being and got responses from peers based in Europe, North America, South America and Asia. Approximately 97% of the respondents needed to go online because of the COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of whether their institution closed down. 75% felt comfortable or very comfortable with technology and 81% stated technology was not the biggest issue during the transition to online teaching.

When asked what the biggest problem for them was, the most frequently given answers were:

balancing work and home responsibilities
getting organized
keeping the workload manageable (especially due to the unavailability of appropriate materials, and thus spending lots of time on the preparation of challenging and meaningful lessons)
poor Wi-Fi
not knowing appropriate tools
talking to people through a screen instead of the preferred face-to-face interaction
involving students and having them all work
further polarization of students who normally do well at school and those who don’t

63% of the respondents declared that their institution didn’t provide them with psychological support, and those who would have expected and wanted this kind of support said that they would have appreciated if their institution offered them a transition break (not urging them to hurry), was more understanding and less demanding, gave them more personal assistance, organized online meetings to discuss the process of distant learning and to make it more consistent, instructed them on how to deal with the puzzling aspects of online education, or at least recognized their efforts. There was also a voice of despair: “at least to respond to my mails and to my questions.”

The last survey question was: “My advice for other teachers and institutions on how to maintain and foster the educator's well-being in COVID-19 times.” Our respondents gave countless wonderful suggestions, making it impossible to quote them all. The frequently recurring ones were: focus on today and take one step at a time; educators need kindness, empathy and hope; don’t look for perfection: we’re all experiencing isolation and fear, so don’t be too harsh on yourself or your students; support of every sort needs be available so no teacher is left alone; educators should join professional groups: teaching means sharing, and we all need mutual support; institutions should be more supportive, not so demanding, and they should give teachers much more autonomy. Respondents stressed that teachers’ well-being is crucial for the educational process to be effective.

We hope that our website will, to some extent, meet the quaranteaching educators’ well-being needs, and that the effect will last when the pandemic is over.

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