Employers and educators are facing the same issues. Although teaching methods and training contents as well as skills requirements are different according the countries, they are confronted with the same reality: school training doesn’t meet all the employers’ needs and interpersonal skills are inadequate. Our project:” learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be: this is real art”, involves students from vocational schools and deals with the increasing of the young’ employment potential. The partnership consists of 4 entities: France, Germany and Italy which are diverse in terms of geography, economy and students’ profiles as well. Two partner vocational high schools are located in the Northern France, a former mining area, part of Unesco world heritage ; a German high school in a wine region near Bonn which supports students from different backgrounds including refugees ; a top Italian high standard school specialised in catering and hospitality. The project is a multidisciplinary pathway involving many subjects taught in secondary schools (such as Science, foreign languages; Humanity; management-administration; catering and hospitality; people’s care). It revolves around two themes: reinforcing key competences to avoid dropping out. When it comes to education, talking about ‘educational and career pathways ’is now granted. In line with this concept, this project is intended to be a pathway to learning the art of living together, the art of good manners , of good food and good taste. The first year will be dedicated to research, cultural and training activities. The second year to cultural activities, final tasks and results to be produced, definitely looking forward to using them further in the future. To reach this objective, the teachers need strong links with partners and companies so their learners can interact meaningfully with them. The role of the students will be to work, share and cooperate before, during and after the mobilities and meetings, which are opportunities for learners to develop relevant transferable skills required for life and in the workplace. The work plan is structured as follows: - Management and coordination - State of the art, presentation - (region; economic situation; education systems) - Mapping employers’ and labour market needs - Bridging the gap between labour market needs and students’ skills supply - Evaluation - Communication, valorisation and project transfer - Cooking , drama workshops (for interpersonal skills development) - Awareness-raising campaign for developing responsible and professional attitude via posters; short video films At the end of the project, the goal is to have a base/guide that will collect all the outputs connected with the exercise of a real active citizenship: the must haves in terms of social /interpersonal and transversal skills.
Employers and educators are facing the same issues. Although teaching methods and training contents as well as skills requirements are different according to the countries, they are confronted with the same reality: school training doesn’t meet all the employers’ needs and interpersonal skills are inadequate. Our project:” learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be: this is real art”, involves students from vocational schools and deals with the increasing of the young’ employment potential. The partnership consists of 4 entities: France, Germany and Italy which are diverse in terms of geography, economy and students’ profiles as well. Two partner vocational high schools are located in the Northern France, a former mining area, part of Unesco world heritage ; a high school in a spa-town in the German Bundesland of Rheiland-Palatinate which supports students from different backgrounds including refugees ; a top Italian high standard school specialised in catering and hospitality situated in the province of Chieti in the region of Abruzzo. The project was a multidisciplinary pathway involving many subjects taught in secondary schools (such as Science, foreign languages; Humanity; management-administration; catering and hospitality; people’s care). It revolved around two themes: reinforcing key competences to avoid dropping out. When it comes to education, talking about ‘educational and career pathways ’is now granted. In line with this concept, this project was intended to be a pathway to learning the art of living together, the art of good manners , of good food and good taste. The initially planned programme was partly respected. The main project start-up and development activities were effectively carried out. The different stages of the project were marked by three meetings with very specific objectives. - Germany : citizenship, democracy. LIVING TOGETHER. - France : personal and professional knowledge. SOFT SKILLS. - Italy : cooking that brings people together. Sustainable cooking. THE ART OF LIVING. Each of these stages was organised according to the same scheme and process : - Upstream management and coordination - Overview of the situation (Inventory of the activities to be conducted) - Identification of the activities collectively approved - Preparation of activities and support for participants - Assessment and remediation - Dissemination of results with a phase of cultural, educative and research activities then a production phase. To this end, links have been forged with the partner schools and certain companies. After the first start-up stage in Germany, all the teams drafted a questionnaire on Soft Skills intended to establish an inventory of skills and employability conditions in the three partner countries. After laying out the questionnaire, the participating students presented it to employers and then , made an assessment from the answers. By using this approach, it became possible to understand the importance of personal or transversal skills or interpersonal skills, which served to follow up on the next stage in France, rightly dedicated to interpersonal skills in everyday and professional life. The students were able to work on social codes, clichés, identity and became aware of each other’s cultural differences and similarities. The professional and artistic aspect of it was demonstrated daily through the ‘practicing’ and ‘cooking together’ experiences in Italy. These experiences and exchanges were somehow just like a mise en abyme of the topic about Soft Skills: the skills at issue were the subjects of a study but at the same time they were used for the study. The role of the students as well as of the teachers was to share and work in collaboration before, during and after the mobilities and meetings in order to develop personal and professional transversal competences. One of the pedagogical and interactive workshops resulted in the production of a video by a group of students with a view to acquiring skills such as cinematographic technics and autonomy in the perspective of the last meeting. The objective of the final stage in the Netherlands was to write on site a guide to good manners by bringing all the works and results together with : the essentials of personal and professional know-how with an artistic extension through an awareness raising campaign via posters, video clips or sketches. This last step could not take place due to the pandemic but some posters could have been be produced. We hope to continue and maintain the partnership . This has already started through the exchange of mobilities and work placements within the framework of KA101 and 102 Erasmus + programme, which is to be followed in the years to come. Thus, teachers (job shadowing in the partner schools) and students and have been able to find work placements in companies and in the school in Italy and Germany.