MOTIVATION III – AUTONOMY- ENTHUSIASTIC SCHOOLS

Context We are 5 European schools that are bonded by the same purpose: to provide nationwide knowledge to our students to acquire new skills, increase their creativity and be more motivated and engaged in school activities. We all organised lots of project to involved our students and we are all finding new strategies and instruments to improve our students learning method. We all think that sharing is growing and we are really interested to work together. This project improved our own knowledge by learning from each other and putting in practice a plan to diagnose and prevent Early School Leaving (ESL) by using the extracurricular activities that each of our schools has presently. Students were really involved in this project and this was the best way to reach out and get in contact with the European reality and identity, improve new relationships , be open-minded towards different cultures. Every school participated in this project with its own experience and, therefore, each school was the master of the other schools by showing its example of good performance, showing the others its methodology and the results that students can get by attending a specific club or activity at school - implementing after-school clubs for students. Italy presented the results and methodology of the photography club, Romania showed how their environment club works, Poland expertise was on the ICT club. As for Portugal, the drama club was the highlight and Turkey, with the robotics club shared their experience. The goals of this plan were: To increase pupils’ stimulation towards school (by motivating students’ awareness of self-esteem and safety, developing their identity and increasing personal aptitudes) To diminish ESL amongst students To plan a common long-term program to fight ESL To increase the number and quality of extracurricular activities in each school To promote crucial aptitudes for the 21st-century student – ICT, digital know-how, teamwork, social communication and social abilities To cultivate students’ sense of innovation To facilitate cultural interexchange To raise students and teachers’ cultural awareness through dialogue and partnership All these goals were enriched but the third of the list is verifiable just in the long therm comparing the number of ESL students year after year. Participants The target groups were 13 to 14-years-old students, in a total of about 300 students. Likewise, teachers from every school – around 150 – were participants in the project. Approximately 100 students and 40 accompanying teachers were involved in the mobilities ;the students were part of the target group. The social backgrounds, interests and motivation shown by the students were the major guidelines for selecting the participants. Our focus of interest were on students who are at risk of abandoning school. Activities The first LTTE was organised in Italy. Teachers and pupils joined this first meeting and debates and seminars will be prepared for teachers .Students were involved in workshops about photography for which they were assigned specific tasks. Italy, the coordinator country provided the lectures for teachers about the subject “Motivating students awareness of self-esteem and safety”. Later on, workshops on the same topic were run with teachers and students altogether. Likewise, LTTA 2 was organised in Romania, where teachers took part in presentations about “Developing children’s identity”. They set in on workshops on the issue, and they learned about environmental education as well. Poland organised LTTA, about “Strengthening children’s sense of commitment” and ICT club activities. LTTA 4 had in Portugal as the leader and “Increasing personal aptitudes” was the topic under analysis and the drama club activities were shown and shared. At last, LTTA 5, organised in Turkey, paid particular attention to “Foster parent-teacher-student effective communication and drown a plan of action”, as well as robotics for beginners. This last was a virtual mobility as for Force major Covid-19 but it was really interesting and significative. Results Workshops, support materials and lectures, meeting reports describing the activities and conclusions, methodologies for putting the clubs in practice and running them, exchanged practices, attendance certificates, pictures taken by pupils, photos of activities, videos, presentations, articles, pictures, interviews, Facebook page, website and Twinspace. Find Pinguins journals about each mobility to collect the experiences heritage and knowhow. Impact Short and long-term advantages are numerous as a result of participating in this partnership. Our human resources improved their tolerance, as well as their effective knowledge on how to implement and use after-school clubs. After observing all clubs from all partners in the first year, the second year was used for implementing new clubs in each partners school. These new activities made us reach major objectives like increasing student stimulus towards school, their sense of innovation and cultural awareness. Students were more engaged in their roles, felt more motivated to develop their autonomous and voluntary work at school and were catapults to increase other students’ interest in school activities too. We also expect that ESL will diminish by applying our long term program to fight it.