Democaris - Am Mellensee, Germany

We will visit Democaris on the 11th of March at 10am

Dagmar, founder of Democaris, has created a model by which students, parents and teachers in Germany can collectively participate in shaping their school environment. In the present authoritative, hierarchical and factbased educational system, students are negative about school, teachers feel drained and exploited, parents are estranged, and none of the communicate. Taking advantage of the current momentum to bolster German student's poor performance on internatinoal standardized tests, Dagmar has developed a system to gather feedback from students, teachers and parents on their personal experiencees of their schools. She then uses this feedback and its evaluation as a springboard for group discussion and democratic decision-making, encouraging the three parties to develop common goals and take shared responsibility for improving their schools. The ensure this positive outcome, Dagmar has introduced and implemented new ideas such as student assemblies, teachers support groups, a parent support database and a regular school feedback day.

http://www.democaris.de