Taking into account that our country is trying to get over the economic crises, a lot of our student's parents are still on the dole, getting by just on the subsidies given by the government. Due to this fact, a large number of the families are getting more and more socially and culturally in distress. Furthermore, there are some families that can't or merely don't feel like committing time to their children. These are the reasons why our school has been engaged in an effort to address the phenomenon of school dropout as a social problem, with several extracurricular projects (eco-schools projects, innovative projects, and a comenius project) in order to prevent the dispersal and integrate the educational role of the family in the school.

 

As most of our teachers are quite young with a strong desire to improve and develop their educational approaches, we are constantly carrying out different sorts of programmes and activities that provide our school with the required expertise to coordinate and develop this Erasmus plus project.

These are the most outstanding activities and experiences in the areas relevant for this project:

1- Developing two Comenius projects (2010/12 as coordinators and 2012/14 as a partner) has provided us with the needed experience to coordinate, organize and develop this European program either at an international or at an school level.

2- We have taken part in the European Green schools since 2009. This has given us practical experience in the development of an environmentally friendly project in which all the school is involved. In addition, one of the parts of this project deals with the environment and, especially with “food and agriculture” in the frame of the “European year of the development 2015” policies. For this reason, our experience as Green School will be very useful.

3- We have developed several innovation projects. Among these projects, it should be pointed out the “school digital newspaper” project carried out in 2013-14. This means that our school has experience in writing a school newspaper and that we already know what kind of difficulties we will have to face and how to sort them out.

4- “Reading in English” project (since 2011) and a multilingualism project (teaching music and arts and crafts in English since 2014). These programmes have provided our staff and students with a better command of the English language that will be very useful to carry out this Erasmus plus project.

5- Sport projects in the school and Sport activities organized by the local authorities. Thanks to these activities our school has a very good collaboration with the local authorities as well as with other schools in our town which will lead to a proper dissemination of the results of the project. What is more, one of the parts of the project deals with sport and healthy-lifestyle habits. That is the reason why these experiences will help us to develop that part of the project in a better way.

6- Open-doors days at school. Every term our school lets the families come into the school to develop several activities with the students and the teachers. Furthermore, our school also carries out a “families- school” that provides families with useful tips on how to deal with their children’s issues. In addition, the Parents Association cooperate with the school in the development and dissemination of these activities which catches the local press and especially the local radio attention. These means that our school will be able to involve not only the local media in the dissemination and development of this project but also the whole community (students, teachers, families…)
 

 

With regard to the skills and expertise of the key people involved in this project, I must say that our school is really fortunate to count on truly committed personnel that have proved their capability to develop ambitious projects working in teams with either teachers from overseas schools or from our own school. Thanks to their previous experiences developing all the different activities named above, our teachers will bring to this new project their inspiration and creativity as well as their work experience and enriching approaches to education. In addition, either the director or the head of studies are always willing to help and make things easier for the teachers so that the activities of the projects can be developed. Particularly, they have a lot of experience organizing and coordinating all the extra activities that we undertake in the school. Our director is really into the enhancement of digital integration in the class. She has been to different conferences and workshops on that matter and has been working with her students their ITC skills and the usage of Open Educational Resources so that they will be able to develop the activities of the project next year. Finally, the coordinator of the project has a very good command of English (the communication language of the project) and has a lot of experience in the development of European projects as she was the coordinator of the former two Comenius projects developed in the school. She is also in charge of the Website of the school and has done several courses on ITC, standing out a course on e-twinning in which she learned how to work with the students using this European platform.