In the last years, our schools and educational systems are confronting several problems: - students need more skills and experience in order to succeed in todays’ employment market; - the processes mentioned above involve an identity crisis; many people feel like they lost their national identity and they are unable to understand the European identity as a sum of all the national and local identities. 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 students with few opportunities and with 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. Needs addressed: - the decreasing level of sustaining the active citizenship values and the European values in various European countries, in the last years; - the need to develop a better understanding and assimilation of the diversity of the European identity by the young generations; - a rising reserve in assuming the local/national values and identities in the same time with (not against!) building a sense of openness to the cultural differences; - the increasing necessity of the improvement of the language competences for the entire target groups; - the necessity of confronting the increasing levels of educational failure and early school leaving with innovative tools and concrete opportunities for remaining in the school; - the improvement of the educational environment -> increasing the satisfaction and motivation in every day activity (for both the students and teachers); - the openness for the integration of new and innovative methods and practice in teaching; - the lack of an auxiliary and a course curriculum similar to those of this project; -the need of improvement in the contribution of non-formal educational activities to the formal education results; The main results: R 1. eBook, “THE HISTORY OF THE PLACE WHERE WE LIVE”: R 2. Multilingual tourist guide, “VISITING MY PLACE OF LIVING”: R 3. Photo album, “WHAT YOU WOULD LOVE THE MOST IN MY PLACE OF LIVING”: R 4. COOKERY BOOK: R 5. CALENDARS: R 6. PROMOTIONAL TOURISTIC MATERIALS (souvenirs): R 7. PROJECT WEBSITE: R 8. FACEBOOK PAGE: R 9. ETWINNING PROJECT: R 10. CURRICULA FOR AN OPTIONAL COURSE: R 11. CURRICULAR AUXILIARY for teaching History, Civics, Counselling and Orientation: The activities of the project are both learning activities for students and training activities for teachers, including short-term join activities abroad. The students will use their competences and knowledge from History, Civics, Literature, Arts, Geography, Economy, ICT etc. in a cross curricular manner. They will search for the past of their places and they will discover how the places changed during (at least one century) and how these changes shaped the life of the people and how the people shaped the face of the place. They will learn how to valorise their heritage and how the common European heritage is, in fact, built by the values of each place. They will become more confident in their capacities and they will become more connected with and more proud of their city and their school. Also, the students will learn to “sell” their place in a tourist manner. They will learn how to pay attention to the foreign colleagues and to see what they are looking for and what things could make them come again. They will develop tourist products and they will exhibit them and even sell them in a tourist fair. The projects also intend to help teachers to share their experiences and to learn from one another. The final products are intended to become didactic tolls for every day activity, and the methods develop to be used again and again in our activity and to repeat the experience of the project with many other students.
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..