| Country | Austria |
| Date/Duration | 2. Semester of 2016-2017 |
| Main subject | Student |
| Age-range of students | Aged 13-14 years old |
| Situation/setting of the school | Public school, Innsbruck, in west Austria.
It is a transition class for migrants and refugee youngsters, who are not ready yet to attend the usual class and have to pass first this transitional class. |
| Theme/short description + how it is related to DoE | One student feels that nobody likes and understands him. The other kids are too loud and too restless for him. Teachers do not know why he’s feeling bad. At times he would prefer to crawl and be left alone by everyone else. On the other hand, it saddens him that he has no friends to talk to. |
| Description of the case study | The student is new in the class and sits alone in the reading corner, crying quietly to himself. Nobody in the class notices this. Only when the teacher sees his empty space, she looks around in the classroom and discovers the sad student. When the teacher addresses him, he sits down in his seat and works in a quite depressed mood.
The student remains unremarkable most of the time. He is a quiet, withdrawn child. The most striking thing about him is that he sits somewhere alone during lessons, but especially during the breaks somewhere and quietly crying to himself. He can’t tell the teacher or the other children why he has to cry so often. He prefers to be alone. He never takes the initiative to talk to another child. In group work, he chooses no one, but remains sitting in his place and waits to see if he is elected. Neither the teacher nor the classmates know what’s wrong with him. Using the “Box of Emotion” technique, students feel at ease and can explain what they feel. The students also learn that they don’t need to repress their feelings, but can share them with others. This technique gave an opportunity for this depressed child to express himself and this way the others could also understand him better. It helped the student to feel more integrated to his class. |
