Important update for our school social work

Talking hours for truants - many people associate this or something similar with school social work and all-day care. We prefer to associate everything else: Pupils at the integrated secondary school ISS Max-von-Laue in Berlin-Lichterfelde, parents and teachers.

For example, on school trips, hiking days and break supervisions, in the planning and implementation of working groups. And in accompanying lessons. Of course, we are also there when there is stress - with advice, mediation, arbitration and referral to external support services. So school social work means much more than just talking - and it is aimed at many more than just truants.

Since the mid-1990s, school social work has been one of the most important areas in which we work. Why? Because a lot of good can be achieved here. This type of work is based on the principle of voluntariness, which means that nobody has to work with us. We make offers and are responsible for preventing conflicts from arising in the best case scenario. To do this, we talk a lot without talking - with the pupils, but also with teachers and parents. Our strength lies in our completely different perspective. We don't look at things from the teacher's or the pupil's perspective. This makes it easier to identify new solutions for everyone when problems arise.

Since the start of the 2014/2015 school year, we have had fixed reference classes in Year 7. A social pedagogue works closely with the respective class teacher and deputy as a team and acts as a fixed point of contact for the pupils and teachers.

Another focus of our work on site is the active support of the full day (Mon-Thu 8 am - 4 pm, Fri 8 am - 2:30 pm). School social work is indispensable here! There are offers for break and leisure activities, we provide supervised rooms and are always present at the school. This also includes supervision during breaks. The school social work team coordinates, organizes and in some cases also runs extracurricular activities. This presence enables teachers to send pupils who have become conspicuous in class to our rooms with a certificate and assignments.

But that's not all: we also organize projects and training sessions on current topics. There are first aid courses and prevention events on the subject of cyberbullying. There is a weekly meeting with the school management to ensure a high level of transparency.

We can only accomplish all these tasks with good planning - and that's exactly what we lack technical solutions for. We work with stationary, outdated computers and would like to have two modern 2-in-1 PCs that we can take to classes, workshops and meetings. This would make our work, including the extensive case documentation, much easier.