Our project started with the appointment of a new head teacher in our secondary school. Her wish was to take part in European large-scale projects, especially through Erasmus+ programme. The second impulse mainly comes from our growing interest in schoolchildren with special needs –more particularly those with learning disabilities and language disorders. A local « School Inclusion » Unit specialized in children with language disorders and learning disabilities opened in our school in 2011. Yet, teachers found it difficult to use adapted and compensatory means with those pupils. Moreover, the climate in our school needed improvement as disrespectful attitudes and misbehaviour were frequent among pupils and a competitive atmosphere in the whole school exposed every teenager to stressful situations and triggered off absenteeism and fights in and outside the school. Our response was to decide to improve our skills on learning disabilities. We want to find the means to anticipate and find solutions more quickly when those pupils are facing learning difficulties. Thus, we need teaching strategies to help our pupils feel comfortable at school. To achieve our goals, we would like to use digital or simply written compensation tools. We want our pupils to be more independent in the learning process and adapt our teaching methods to a pedagogy based on motivation. With such a new approach, we will lead our pupils to success. Through our project, the digital and pedagogical tools used with the 12 students with learning disabilities will be used in the whole school. It will be made possible by all the teachers with small groups of students or with whole classes. We have chosen to share our practices with romance-speaking countries, whose linguistic roots are Latin, with grammatical and lexical similarities. They have pupils with language disorders and learning disabilities and carry out similar teaching research. We intend to organize 3 transnational meetings with 5 teachers and staff and 6 pupils (with language disorders and learning disabilities) from each country each time. During these 7 days’ meetings, many events will take place: - The teachers and staff will shadow their colleagues and share their good practices; - The teachers and staff will attend talks given by educational experts, and paramedics; - The pupils will build their own board game (on the same pattern as « Trivial Pursuit ») with questions relating to their syllabus; - The pupils will also carry out a survey about inclusion in their own school to assess how their schoolmates see them ; - The pupils will interview one another and broadcast the interviews on the school’s web radio. We expect a better inclusion of our pupils with special needs inside their class. We think our efforts will make school-life less stressful for the pupils and the teachers. We hope to reach our goal when the teachers and the schoolmates will know more about their disorders and when they know how to adapt to them during the lessons. Our new innovating practices will be transferable in whole classes so the pupils can feel emotionally more comfortable. The pupils with learning disorders will thus reach a sizeable level of autonomy in class with less writing practice and a better self-esteem.
Regarding high scales projects, we have, after this first experience, raised a second ERASMUS project, which concerns all high schools teachers and teenagers interested by sustainable economy : "My earth, my home.", which talks about human activities toward climate. Five countries are concerned by this project for duration of two years. Today, teenagers having language and learning disabilities are highly considered within our high school and there are many procedures put since their arrival to ensure them a better following for their studies. The studies atmosphere within our high school is better, the number of teenagers enrolled is growing year after year, and good results at "graduation exams"have been recorded. Our education approaches (by project, use of digital, colours, use of computers...etc) were a real success. We have included many teachers from different disciplines. We have decided to share our experiences with European countries, those from latin roots, grammatically similar, hosting students having language and learning disabilities, for which, same teaching modalities are used. Meetings were token place in Roumania, Portugal, and a virtual one i France. - Events for adults using modules and best practices between educational stuff. - Events for adults to deepen our knowledge by having interventions from disability specialists and para-medical specialists. - Students have built their own society game " Trivial Pursuit" linked with their cultures and their study program. - Students have performed surveys within their high schools reading topics of inclusion and knowledge of disabilities (This last one was difficult to make) - Students have realised short videos of their actions during Robotyc project. Today, the teenagers ULIS are included into ordinary classrooms, this inclusion is done since their first year in the school. and they are more serene, less stressful. At the same time, adults have specific knowledges about their disabilities and required adaptations, so they can establish an adaptated project for the young, and use compensation tools. We hope that these innovative practices will be transferable into classrooms in order to promote well-being of students, using experienced means during meetings and within this project. Students have reached a similar level of autonomy as ordinary classromms students, also a high self-confidence.