The project entitled "My career in Europe" has emerged from our noticing some problems our students face: - the difficulty for students to open their mind to unknown cultures and societies - the students not knowing about the wide range of opportunities offered in Europe - the difficulties in using a foreign language and ICT skills - the social and aconomical context the students live in - the monotony of educational programme. So, our project has several objectives: - to enable the students to widen their possibilities for further education and career at a European level - to develop students' practical skills and abilities to facilitate their transition from school to work and integrate the labour market - to enhance their skills in English - to improve the use of new ICT - to develop the idea of being a European citizen through tolerance and respect for each other - to broaden the participants’ horizon and promote the European dimension through collaboration - to increase the number of mobilities by involving students and educational staff in the project. In order to reach these goals, we have agreed on the following approach: There will be six project meetings supported by preparation, interaction, collection, reflection, documentation, mainly in three steps: 1. collecting the relevant European and national data, analysis, documentation of education system, economy, labour market, regarding the most important facts and criteria in the area of transition between school, further training and work domain. 2. six project meetings, linked to the project topic: education systems, economy, transition from school to work, further training, labour market, improving skills and abilities to facilitate the transition processes from school to further training and employment. 3. a handbook (a book the students will create at the end of the project containing the results of their preparations and of the meetings) which will not only contain an overwiew of the work done as regards the preparation for further training and employment on a European level, but which will also show the importance of being a European citizen. As it will be small-sized and handy, the students will be able to show it around them. To facilitate communication, students will design a weblog, so as to post problems and solutions, related to the project topic. This blog. The aims, objectives, activities and results will be posted on the project webpage, also designed by the students and administered by the Lithuanian partner. The reports of each project meeting may be posted on the web pages of each partner school. The website will also provide with all the useful information gathered in the handbook and will be made public for as many people as possible to know about the project.
Our project entitled “My career in Europe” covered the time period of 1st September 2017 to 31st December 2020. It enabled us to set up all the activities that we had planned to achieve the goals we had set ourselves in the application form. Indeed, we had previously noticed that it was necessary to start a new project for our students to be more self-confident, to improve their skills in English as well as in the use of new technologies, and to develop their own idea of a European citizenship. This collaboration was supposed to open up new horizons for our students, most of whom having to face difficulties common among teenagers: getting out of their comfort zone and opening up to the world while daring to speak a foreign language. It was also supposed to enable them to cut off from the monotony of their curriculum. We chose participating organizations whose profile was different from our school’s. We targeted more or less rural schools and which shared our objectives. On the whole, 5 schools participated to this project. The diversity of the schools and of the partner countries enabled a larger multiculturalism. It was very interesting for our students to notice the cultural differences of several European countries: in Austria, the school is situated in the capital city but it also hosts many students born of foreign parents; in Bulgaria, the school is situated in a very small and rather underprivileged town; in Lithuania, the school is situated in a small town; finally in Greece, the school is situated in an area which has suffered from the 2008 economic crisis. This diversity enabled the students, whatever their country of origin, to become aware of the differences, but above all of the similarities between the young of very distinct countries: after discovering the culture and forgetting the language barrier, they very quickly created bonds: they are European teenagers with the same desires and dreams. On the whole, about 100 students and 30 teachers could get in touch with at least one of the partner schools, either when hosting foreign groups in their schools, or when sharing the preparatory material for the meetings, and even more people as the schools shared the results with all the students and personnel of their schools, without forgetting the host families who accepted to host a foreign student. The activities set up in the application form were held in a progressive way. First in class to prepare for the meetings (research work), then in group work during the Learning, Teaching and Training activities (sharing the results of the research and exchanges), the activities enabled to go smooth with our project and to achieve our goals. It is obvious that, apart from the fact of learning about the possibilities students can have if they want to study and/or work abroad, the meetings were essential and shaped the minds of all the participants towards a better self- and other people acceptance, towards more acceptance of the difference and towards more inclusion. Not only was our objective of improving language skills greatly achieved, but our goal of more open-mindedness among our students was even more greatly reached. Their stereotypes and prejudice soon disappeared during the different meetings. As for the teachers, the meetings were also the occasions to exchange their good practices, a useful thing to improve their working skills. Nevertheless, because of the sanitary situation, the last meeting in France, planned in March 2020, couldn’t be held and our project couldn’t be totally finished, and we don’t have any final product (simulation of job interviews respecting the work laws of each country). We were agreed a postponement of the project ending date (until 31st December 2020), but the pandemic never permitted us to be better organized, some of the partner schools teaching online only, others in a hybrid way, and even if in September we could have tried to organize something, some schools hadn’t started yet, and the time was too short. It is a real disappointment which was detrimental to the project itself, but not really to the participants, at least to the students: they surely benefited from all the advantages this kind of project offers in terms of exchanges, language, and learning about Europe and European citizenship, and they will necessarily keep a long-term benefit. As for the teachers, there is this feeling of unaccomplished task, but they know they haven’t done things for nothing; the student’s reactions were so positive that they can be proud of it.