School-wide psychological thematic weeks in a gymnasium

Abstract

A child spends most of his or her time at school, interacting not only with classmates and the homeroom teacher, but also with older and younger children, subject teachers, technical staff and peers’ parents. How to help a child become successful in communication in the school space? How to develop in the younger generation the ability to interact effectively in a team, strengthen interpersonal connections, and satisfy the natural needs of adolescents for creative self-expression and recognition? Our article focuses on these and other questions of education and psychological development. After all, “the bright events in school life — prepared consciously and carried out by the majority — as a rule, contain values and moral guidelines on which the life of this majority is built. And large educational events create periods of increased emotional stress of a positive nature in the school. In such cases, collective experiences multiply, intensify by many times and have a strong effect on the individual” (Karakovsky 2013, 1). Russia’s Ministry of Education issued recommendations to schools on holding Psychology Week 2022, describing “a system of planned events aimed at psychological education and prevention among participants in educational relations and carried out over the course of several days, including events that enhance intercultural communication and stress resistance in children and adolescents, as well as contribute to a favorable psychological attitude and positive motivation of students” (Methodological Recommendations 2022, 2). The team of educational psychologists at our gymnasium thought about this back in the 2020–21 academic year and successfully implemented our first Psychology Week, which was based on game interaction. After analyzing the results of the first week, we decided to develop this approach and increase the number of school-wide psychological weeks. This article describes our experience of using schoolwide activities to form a healthy and harmonious personality and create a motivating and developing educational environment. We reveal the principles, tasks and importance of the work of educational psychologists with students, teachers and parents in educational institutions.