Sustainable cities: past and present Erasmus Project

Project Title

Sustainable cities: past and present

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The project “Sustainable cities: past and present” has been conceived as a means to deal with a problem affecting the coordinating school: the greater part of our pupils come from a disadvantaged background. Therefore, a great deal of our students lack motivation and miss classes regularly, which results often in early school dropout. This negative aspect is, partly, due to the scarce family involvement in their children’s education. Apart from this, as families are not wealthy they can´t afford to send their children abroad so that they get to know other cultures and their heritage, other languages or other lifestyles which help them understand our own better and develop a civic identity. In short, to discover new ideas and different lifestyles and ways of thinking, something essential for social inclusion and for equality in all aspects of our society, helping them, thus, become more open-minded and tolerant citizens. Therefore, we set the following objectives as essential for our students:

1 Raising awareness of the importance of the European cultural heritage, knowing the evolution with the passing of time of the city of Cáceres and those of the partners involved, accepting and valuing favourably the cultural differences.

2 Fighting the lack of motivation and early school dropout, providing the students of all socioeconomic and academic backgrounds with a rich model of inclusive bilingual education, by means of the use of ICT, active and innovative teaching methods (mainly Learning Based on Projects) and with the curricular integration of several subjects included in the Syllabus in the same project, specifically: History and Geography, Biology and Geology, Spanish Language, Foreign Languages, Maths, Technology, Music and Religion. This multidisciplinay approach contributes to develop a collaborative culture among the teachers of different subjects, to agree on objectives, contents and activities altogether, which may not be usual in the teaching practice.

Our strategic association is made up of five participant partners, which have been chosen by means of eTwinning, with similar problems. They all give us the opportunity to know and analyse some cities with great cultural heritage such as Cáceres (Spain), Amaliadas (Greece), Qualiano (Italy), Rouffach (France) in contrast with Kolobrzeg (Poland), which was devastated and burned during War World II, and therefore can be called a “new” city. This characteristic provides an added value to our project, as it gives the opportunity to find out whether this city and its citizens have experimented cultural and social developments very different from those of the other cities involved.

The objective of this Association is that our students know the social and educational value of our European cultural heritage, by means of a study of the sustainability of different aspects related to our heritage throughout history, namely: means of communication, evolution and expression of religion, adaptation of the human being to the surrounding habitat, migratory movements of the human being and the relationship of music with the cultural heritage of our cities. In this sense, we understand that music, in any of its manifestations, is inherent to the human being since its origin.

Special attention will be always paid to the fundamental role of women in the development of the European civilization, and social inclusion and equity will be the cross-curricular topic dealt with in all activities.

When designing our project, we have planned activities, both formal and informal, which motivate our students and help them not only get involved, but actually become the real protagonists. The students aimed to take part in the activities are mostly those in 3rd and 4th year Compulsory Second Education.
By carrying out the activities, we make sure that our students acquire an overall view of the social and cultural value of our heritage, an improvement of their digital competence, learn to value their peers with respect and tolerance and improve their linguistic competence.
The tangible result intended is an open digital book, which includes the didactic units, and all the material created in the project, the same as a decrease in the number of dropouts in our schools, and, in the long run, a reinforcement of cooperation nets among the partners.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 143900 Eur

Project Coordinator

IES Javier García Téllez & Country: ES

Project Partners

• EPLEFPA “Les sillons de Haute Alsace”
• IC Di Giacomo 3 S.Chiara
• 3o GYMNASIO. AMALIADAS
• Szkola Podstawowa nr 6