Our Project “Euroenviroments: rural areas as a learning opportunity “ involves four European schools. They share similar backgrounds, contexts, objectives, needs and the same educational approach. All of them are placed in rural regions which are going through a demographic decline and ageing population. This social situation has a direct impact in our students not only when their personal development and career success may be undermined, but also when their future chances in their birthplaces are at a risk. The significant differences generated by living in rural settings put them in disadvantage compared to others. Our grammar school “Pablo Díez” has been fighting for many years to make up these gaps and develop a methodological proposal using Project Based Learning (PBL) to get deeper in acknowledging and considering our environments. We realized right away that our project needs to have a European dimension which gives us a wide context to succeed in achieving the objectives and improving the work through skills. PBL implies to create a good team who will be better when different people with different cultures, languages, studies and profiles will be working on it. This diversity offers our students great opportunities to learn and prepare them to work in a global and varied atmosphere and economy. As a result, we decided to look for European schools who would like to make a cross border educational partnership which brought to life the strengths of the rural areas and turned our schools into an instrument of sustainable and cultural development. Through the eTwinning community we found other schools who were working with the same type of students who are in need of motivation, open minded perspective and future prospects. The project is targeted mainly to improve high quality skills apart from the objectives mentioned before. We wanted that our partnership should also promote the sense of initiative, the creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit of young people and make it possible for them to acquire the necessary skills to face new challenges. It is very important for us to create a collective awareness to promote inclusion and tolerance among our young people and prepare them to become active actors in their own development improving their competences, especially the linguistic and the digital ones and at the same time push the feeling on preserving the natural and cultural heritage. Two formative activities have been programmed for 2 teachers of every country who will be selected from those who display a high involvement in the project, valuing their linguistic skills and digital competence. In the four exchanges planned for the student body (one to every country) 24 pupils -aged 13 to 17 years- of all the schools will take part. The participating students will be selected between those who show a greater interest and motivation in the accomplishment of the activities connected to the project and show collaborative initiative and skills enough to be able to make the most out of these exchanges. The proposed activities look for an interdisciplinary approach to the territory starting from the local context to the global one. To do so, different routes will be carried out on the nearby environment and promotional materials on their natural and cultural heritage will be designed. We also will work on the connections, differences and similarities between the natural way, the culture and the history of the countries. This, also, deepens in the diversity and common aspects of the European territory. The activities will be developed through methodologies of PBL and cooperative work with transnational groups, within an eminently practical and applied approach. Among the programmed activities the ones linked to two projects of innovation stand out: the design of ecological and intelligent school gardens (with automation of various tasks) and the workshops on tourism and sustainable development, aimed at promoting the entrepreneurship. At the same time, we note the formative activity for the teacher staff "Teacher: to leader in local community", that approaches one of the priority working lines of the project: to involve to the local community. With the implementation of this project we try to achieve some tangible rewards in the schools: the improvement of key competences and the acquisition of high-quality skills.The internationalization and cross-border partnership will be improved in order to answer to the challenges of depopulation and the needs of areas remote from labour niches. Regarding teacher staff, the methodologies will be implemented to sort out the school dropout and employability in rural areas. For this purpose, we will integrate the results of the project and the new acquired methodological approaches in the educational projects of the schools. Besides, all materials developed will be available to the local communities to show the possibilities of improvement of the environment.
“Euro-environments: rural areas as a learning opportunity” has been carried out by four schools that shared common contexts, objectives, necessities, and educational approaches; these schools are all set in rural environments that have been badly affected by a demographic decline and ageing population. This social situation shapes their students´ personal development as well as their expectations, let alone the upcoming opportunities that might arise in their birthplaces. Our school “Pablo Díez” has been fighting for many years to address these deficiencies, and with this goal in mind, a methodological proposal using Project Based Learning (PBL) has been a cornerstone within our school training plan. We soon realized that this further study on our environment should entail a European dimension and platform where the objectives and the competences are to be embodied; by doing so, students are likely to be better equipped with the right tools to successfully operate in a global work environment. Through the E-twinning community, we contacted The Collége La Feuillade (Vic-sur-Aisne, France), “IIS G.A.Pishcedda (Bosa, Italy) and Szkola Podstawowa nr10im. Janusza Korczaka (Tarnobrezg, Poland); all of them were schools eager to make a cross border educational partnership which brought the strengths of the rural areas to life and turned our schools into an instrument of sustainable and cultural development. Along with the aforementioned objectives, the project tasks were targeted mainly to boost high quality skills. We challenged ourselves to promote the sense of initiative, the creativity, and the entrepreneurial spirit of our students. We also set our hearts on building up collective awareness standards. The project promoted inclusion and tolerance among our youngsters; it also prepared them to become active actors in their self-development much less upgraded their competences, notably the cultural and awareness expression, the digital and the linguistic one. Six teachers from the partner countries along with fifteen teachers working in the coordination school attended a workshop on robotics application in school orchard management at the early stages of the project. During this seminar, teachers learnt how to manage Arduino software in order to set sensors in motion; these sensors monitor the exact water quantity a plant should need; working in this way, the intelligent use of this invaluable resource is indisputable. Needless to say that this cutting-edged technology has the biggest impact on farming, main sector in our economy. 62 students and 16 teachers attended three mobilities with students organized within the project implementation. The polish school shared entrepreneur women stories who had to overcome an array of obstacles to succeed when setting up their businesses. They also showed the rest of the participants valuable examples of creative adaptations of recreation areas. In France, all the participants worked in the school orchard making a worm compost bin and an insect hotel. The focus of the mobility in Bosa revolved around tourism and sustainable development. Unfortunately, and to the despair of the four schools, the last two mobilities scheduled within the project could not be accomplished owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. Instead, further efforts were needed to do domestic activities that let us work in tandem sharing the results and impact with the partner schools. The coordinator school displayed its partners the project-based activities that had been accomplished along these 36 months so that they were externally assessed as formerly agreed in the objectives. The research on the environment was rounded up with the creation of a moving literary route entitled “The echo of the mountain” based on two literary works by Julio Llamazares. This literary route has enriched the area of Boñar, and it has also promoted high-quality competences and entrepreneurship. By the same token, the heart-warming route has ramped up the area´s international visibility turning Euroenvironments into the driving force of cultural development. The sustainability of the project is clearly demonstrated through this route whose dissemination on social media, newspapers, and radio exceeded initial expectations. The four schools did roughly 40 different activities over the course of the project, each of them with clear goals in mind: interdisciplinary approach to the surrounding environments, cultural exchanges, schools’ internationalization, and social skills increase. During these three hectic years, we have had a thorough understanding of our areas, discovered our heritage, designed a literary tour, attended workshops, analysed strengths and opportunities but above all this, we have led to the conclusion that these rural environments do offer significant opportunities ahead. Furthermore, we are all convinced that there are real opportunities for our students to make their living in their rural birthplaces.