THE PLACE WHERE WE LIVE! Erasmus Project

Project Title

THE PLACE WHERE WE LIVE!

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 : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

Our project has been developed starting from several challenges we all have noticed in our educational environments:
– the students’ need for more skills and more experience in order to succeed in todays’ employment market, starting with the key competences;
– the processes mentioned above involve an identity crisis; many people feel like they are unable to understand the European identity as a sum of all the national and local identities. The events happened at the European level during these 2 project years, have confirmed this situation: the refugees’ crisis, the rising dissatisfaction of the young generations, the Brexit or various secession referenda etc.

The objectives:
O1: to contribute to the development of a sense of identity at the three levels local-national-European, a key component of an active European citizenship;
O2: to raise the awareness of such a central European value as the diversity –> understanding and appreciating the values and cultural heritage from all the continent;
O3: to use non-formal educational means in fulfilling the objectives of the formal education;
O4: to create an environment for exercising the key-competences, especially language competences (foreign and mother languages), digital skills and learning to learn and to foster the transversal aspect of these skills;
O5: to involve the students with few opportunities and with the risk of early school leaving in various educational activities in order to improve their responsibility, their self-confidence and their sense of belonging to the school and to the community. These students have to be at least 20% of all the students (both directly and indirectly) involved.
O6: to develop more attractive didactic tools in line with the needs and expectations of the new generations, promoting the interdisciplinary activities;
O7: to revise and to improve the professional profile of the teachers involved;
O8: to promote the transnational dissemination of good practice and innovation in education.

Our consortium included 8 schools from 7 countries. Their contribution has confirmed the selection, which was made on the following criteria:
– the compatibility -> we found a common age range, the specialization was diverse, but complementary, all of us had similar needs;
– during this project, the complementarity between the Romanian schools has demonstrated again very well its utility, as it happened previously in our long cooperation;
– the opportunities offered by the city of the school for the scope of the project -> all our ”places of living ” being rich in History and cultural heritage, each of them having something unique and unknown for its visitors;
– the motivation for participating, which were demonstrated by the enthusiastic involvement of the teachers, the students and the parents, and by the warm hospitality and willingness to organise a very attractive programme which we met in every mobility.;
– the expertise -> their added value for the project: experts in training teachers (RO), in arts (UK, IT, P) or ITC (D, CY), in teaching History (RO, PL) or in organising non formal educational activities (all the partners).

We have organised 4 transnational learning activities and 4 transnational training activities. Each of them has its own specific subject and was the conclusion of local activities held in our school in the months before the mobility. All the transnational activities had the crucial role in the attainment of our objectives.
We had also 2 transnational project meetings, one at the beginning for organising the entire framework of our cooperation and one at the end in order to approve and to adjust the final products and to work on the final report.

All the products we have proposed were realised. Those which had to be printed (R1-R8 and R11) are now in both printed and digital form. The curriculum were approved by the School Inspectorate (ISMB) in order to be taught in the Romanian schools, starting with 2017/2018.

As impact we should mention:
– the development of a better understanding and assimilation of the diversity of the European identity;
– a rising openness to the cultural differences;
– a very visible improvement of the language competences for the entire target groups;
– the assimilation of new and diverse teaching tools;
– the attraction represented by the project has represented a concrete opportunity for remaining in the school – all the few opportunities students involved have registered better results and a decreasing of the absenteeism;
– a clear increase in the satisfaction and motivation for every day school activity (for both students and teachers);

Long term benefits:
– Skills, competences and change in attitude from which the participants will keep benefit in their future studies and careers;
– A strong added value in term of a higher attractiveness for our schools’ educational offers;
– A new project which is implemented starting this year with 4 of the former project’ partners..

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 223435 Eur

Project Coordinator

LICEUL TEHNOLOGIC “SFANTUL PANTELIMON” & Country: RO

Project Partners

• LSA Technology and Performing Arts College
• PASCAL Greek School Lemesos
• Städtische Realschule Broich
• Gimnazjum z Oddzialami Dwujezycznymi nr 93 im. Ksiezej Izabeli Czartoryskiej
• Istituto di Istruzione Superiore “P. Carcano”
• SCOALA GIMNAZIALA NR. 92
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Canedo