Helping School

Tanoda is a helping school according to its basic philosophy:
its task is to give an aid for lost students asking for help, who dropped out from secondary schools, fight with serious problems with regard to solving life problems, finishing high school and taking the final exams. We interpret this assistance as a uniform, interconnected process, which consists of all activities we do together with the students. We provide space and possibility for those young people who find us with an aim to learn. They have the ability to learn, but somehow this ability is blocked since they could not get along in any other school. Our main principle is that it is not the student intending to learn who should fit in the school, but it is us who try to fit the institutional framework to his or her needs within lawful possibilities.

The most important elements of the method of the Tanoda:

• formulating and providing an accepting, safe, supporting school atmosphere;
• providing the possibility of structured activities for the whole day;
• helping pair system;
• helping work and the crew-like operation of the Tanoda;
• personal and individual learning program and methods.

In this individual-centered supporting atmosphere, during the period the students spend here - which may be a personality-building process taking years and years - young persons acquire strengthened self-confidence on the one hand, and meaningful human relationships on the other hand, and find success in learning. The result of these together is that the problems they carry with themselves become less or even disappear.

General state of the students, problems and problem solving

Students who attend Tanoda are often characterised by unstable psychic state, unreal self esteem, the lack of self confidence, meaningful activities and aims and future image. Most of them are uncommunicative, distrustful people for whom it is difficult to form relationships.They often reject adult society and the adult way of life because of disappointments and the experience of intolerance of adults towards young people. They are characterised by the lack of sincere acceptance of feelings and love. They have experienced a long sequence of failures in their emotional life, in their human relationships (parent, teacher and peer relationships) and also in their school life.
In addition they have learning problems in the background of which there are these other special problems mentioned above. Learning problems can originate from concentration disorders; attention that only lasts for a short period and is not deep enough, interrupted and periodical; learning method and learning technique deficiencies; analysation (note-taking, essence-finding and drafting) and synthetisation (realising connections) difficulties. The anxiety deriving from all the above makes them unable to perform at the school. The essence of the individual-centered attitude typical of the Tanoda is that we simultaneously focus on the whole character and personality of the students, we try to improve their psychic state, the troubles caused by it, reveal the individual problems hidden behind the scenes and supporting the student in finding the solution. Tools: special school atmosphere, whole-day structured activities and the helping pair system.

Helping activities and the staff-operation of the Tanoda

The operation of the Tanoda and the helping activities are done by the helper-teachers organised to a staff. Teachers' tasks and helpers' work are not separated, every time when the employees of the Tanoda are together with the students is an essential part of the helping work. Teaching itself is also defined as helping work. The most important area of the helping work is being together daily, the school-life where in a natural setting, individual attention and care is realised spontaneously. This is the best way to get to know each other, since the students and their helpers meet and cooperate in many different situations (teaching-learning, personal discussions with the helping pair, chatting in the breaks, spontaneous group- or personal discussions, drinking coffee, tea, free-time activities, sports, excursions, etc.) This symbiosis is real, the employees and the students are not even separated with regard to space, the office (the "staff room") is the place for social life as well, everybody is free to enter. All of us, students and helper-teachers are all parts of each other's life in the school. This symbiosis gives a possibility for the helpers to represent their attitude to life most authentically, to show a pattern with regard to human relationships, show how communication operates, how to live different life situations, how to undertake and express emotions and feelings and how to treat and solve daily problems and conflicts. It is important that the crew forms an inspiring helping medium for the students where besides formulating the aims, activities, learning, creative work, clear communication, a wish to change, making efforts to solve the problems and stepping forward are all extremely valuable. The crew mediates these values towards the students and gives an assistance to support their realisation in all different ways. At the weekly meetings, the crew, besides the professional management of the school, the organisation of its daily life (organisation of study, organisation of spare-time, administration with regard to education, etc.), performs the professional control of the helping work. At the weekly crew meeting we discuss the current problems, status, situation of each student. Information exchange between the crew and the helping pair ensures the safe atmosphere and individual care for the young person and the support of the whole crew on the one hand, and the protection of the student on the other hand. All information and problems given and heard at the crew meeting are confidential, of course. Since the students are or have been taught, or at least known by all the teachers, everybody tells their experiences, feelings, thoughts and problem-solving ideas about each student.
These discussions give serious help and support to all persons involved:

• from the aspect of the students it ensures that everybody knows their situation and problems, and that their teachers think and care about them together
• for the helping pairs it gives a wider knowledge, and the collective thinking and action ensures great support in their helping work and the protection of their person (extreme involvement, partiality, burning out, getting tired to early, etc.)
• it gives broader information to the other helpers with regardt to individual students, which makes their teaching-, lesson- and helping work much easier.

The staff has a supervising role as well with the professional control of the helping work. In the work of the crew, confidence, respect and acceptance are all determining among the members. Everybody is equal in the crew, every viewpoint, opinion and emotion is equally important. Communication within the crew and between the crew members give an extremely strong pattern for the students, and for this reason, we make every effort not to defeat but to convince each other during our arguments and debates.

Individually formulated learning program and methods

Individually formulated learning program and methods ensure the individual progress pace for the students to be realised, and help them to finish high-school and to take the final exams. Young people who find Tanoda arrive with repeated school failures, learning problems. They do not have self confidence, they are anxious about all different kinds of learning situations. If they get a question or an exercise, they often go blank and give up thinking very quickly. Although their wish to take the final exam is very strong, because they think their life would change and they would have a wider range of possibilities, they consider themselves unable and incapable of meeting the requirements of a school. They actually have serious learning problems, the reasons of which are not to be found in the weakness of their understanding but in their personal problems.

Components of the individual learning program: Individual-centered teaching, individual progress pace, agreement system, exam system, course method and the final exam adjusted to the progress pace.

Special individual problems of the students and the methods for treating these problems

The reasons behind the mental and psychic condition of the students attending Tanoda are all very different. We react to these basically with the helping methods characterstic of the Tanoda, as detailed above. In treating special individual problems, some elements of the helping pedagogy could have more role or weight, and within the helping method of the Tanoda, individual, sometimes special methods must be used that require extra preparation. The long row of possible problems is really varied: in many cases depression and other psychic problems and disorders; the students often live in an incomplete family or the family background is uncertain, many times they have to support themselves; being in state care often result in life management difficulties; to support and raise their own child could be a problem; sometimes the case is that one of the learning abilities is missing; many young persons are at the different levels of a deviant carreer; many of them used alcohol or other drugs habitually; there can be a great gap between their real, biological or mental age; we meet physically handicapped persons, and there are some students who fight with language problems.

Our experiences show that students finishing Tanoda leave the school being definitely "mature" compared to their initial state. Our final exam is equal to the standards of an average Hungarian high school final exam with regard to factual knowledge, but as for life-knowledge and self-knowledge, it is much better. Its significance is extremely high for our students, handing out the final exam certificates is the greatest celebration of the school.