On 30th May 2022 the Jesuit European Committee for Primary and Secondary Education (JECSE) and Zentrum für Ignatianische Pädagogik (ZIP) organized first online Safeguarding workshop “Preventing boundary violating behavior: from human dignity, shame and embarrassment”. Leaded in Germany language training was a great chance for teachers from our European network to discuss another important aspect of taking care for our students. During the workshop, participants reflected on the importance of shame in human life. On the one hand, this important emotion protects the dignity of the human person. However, the boundary to toxic shame is very narrow. Exposure that violates boundaries, known as shaming, can cause micro-injuries that can haunt a person for life. In the course of the joint discussion and the tasks performed, they answered the questions: How can shame be recognised and reduced in everyday pedagogical work? Where do we talk about positive and toxic shame? And how can we live a pedagogy in which we consciously prevent boundary violating behavior?

We are grateful to Cathrin Rieger from the ZIP Center for introducing us to this important topic and showing us how many communication aspects we have to pay special attention to in our educational work with children and young people.

We will continue our journey with the topic of the protection of minors after the summer break by means of prepared workshops and online seminars. Detailed information about them can be found on our websites: www.jecse.org, https://zip-ignatianisch.org.