The coordinating school, School Center for Inclusive Education ,,C-tin Paunescu “ Recas is a school adapted to the requirements of the social inclusion of children with special needs, training over 250 students with mental, behavioral and emotional disorders. One of the important issues in our school in the last years is school attendance. Our students come from conflictual backgrounds or nomadic families, some of them being born in various european cities, in sporadic contact with several european cultures. They often experience difficulties of attending school and being accepted and include it in and outside school. This is a problem at the national level as Romania is on the top third European countries at high rate of ESL (report by UNICEF in 2015). This problem can be also found in other european schools. Through the e-twinning platform we have identified schools that share the same needs. We have chosen to collaborate with Newark School in Malta and Zihni Üstün Ortaokulu School in Turkey because we share a common need, both schools have experience in international projects and show that they understand and agree with the terms of the project. Throughout the writing of the project there was a collaborative process, both partners providing their help and showing their willingness to participate in all stages of the project. Our common goal is to provide teachers with appropriate tools to reduce absenteeism. The aim of the project PRESENT FOR YOUR FUTURE is to find together solutions to raise children inclusion and school attendance in order to give them a chance to succes. What we propose is to identify models of intervention at the school and community level through the exchange of experience and the sharing of successful attempts implemented in schools with different educational systems facing similar problems. The project is aimed at professional development of 36 teachers (12 teachers from each partner school, selected through a process agreed by the partners) in order to prevent school absenteeism. The OBJECTIVES of are: - to increase teachers' competence to approach absenteeism for children from ethnic and cultural diversity groups - to transfer good practices applyed in other schools and adapt/inovate them for our school - to increase the attractiveness of the educational process for pupils in all partner schools - to extend the teachers' knowledge regarding the school motivation of children with special needs - to develope a Good practice guide that includes measures to combat absenteeism experienced in partner schools - to be a pioneer among schools in the region in developing a coherent model of reducing absenteeism for children with special needs To rich this we propose 3 teacher mobility with school visits, class observation, workshop on absenteeism, conferences, a photo-voice exhibition on e-twinning, a symposium on absenteeism at school CSEI Constantin Paunescu and a Good Practice Guide that includes measures to combat absenteeism experienced in partner schools. Besides direct beneficiaries, the project addresses other categories of interested persons. Other teachers will take part in the project as volunteers. Students will be involved in activities in the host school. Although they will not participate in traveling to other countries for logistical reasons, they will be involved in organizing visits, demonstrative lessons, parenting sessions. They will communicate with students from partner schools in the on-line environment for organizing the photo-voice exhibition on e-twinning. The parents will be involved in information sessions on motivation of children with special needs, age peculiarities, absenteeism. At national level, other teachers interested in the topic will be informed through the articles and symposium on the project results. During all the project implementation we will make use of e-twinning platform to share videos, documents and create discussions among the participants of the project. Through the Good Practice Guide, that will be available for anyone interested, the experimental methods will be further used by specialists, both as a tool for reducing absenteeism and as a basis for further research on the subject As a result, teachers in participating schools will be equiped with knowledge and tools useful in preventing / reducing absenteeism in children from vulnerable backgrounds characterized by socio-cultural diversity. In the long term, will result the institutional development of the schools in the direction of staff growth, with a team of motivated and well-trained teachers who understand the issue of school absenteeism from a European perspective. By developing common activities with students and parents during the project, it will increase the involvement of all beneficiaries in the education, with effects on school presence and motivation. In conclusion, when the project is completed, there will be long-term benefits for all parties involved.
Present for Your Future is a strategic partnership project that came on the need to prevent / reduce absenteeism in the 3 participating schools. All schools involved work with children with educational difficulties and faced in the last years the problem of school absenteeism. In C. Paunescu school students come often from conflictual backgrounds or nomadic families, some of them being born in various european cities, in sporadic contact with several european cultures. They experience difficulties of attending school and being accepted it in and outside school. This problem can be also found in the partener schools: Newark School Malta and Zihni Üstün Ortaokulu School Turkey. Our common goal was to provide teachers with tools to reduce absenteeism. The aim of PRESENT FOR YOUR FUTURE was to find solutions to raise children inclusion and school attendance to give them a chance to succes. We did identify models of intervention through the exchange of experience and shared successful attempts implemented in our schools. The project was aimed at professional development of 36 teachers (12 teachers from each school) in order to prevent school absenteeism. The OBJECTIVES were: - to increase teachers' competence to approach absenteeism for children from ethnic and cultural diversity groups - to transfer good practices applyed in other schools and adapt/inovate them for our schools - to increase the attractiveness of the educational process for pupils in all partner schools - to extend the teachers' knowledge regarding the school motivation of children with special needs - to develop a Good practice guide that includes measures to combat absenteeism - to be a pioneer among schools in the region in developing a coherent model of reducing absenteeism for children with special needs The project activities, mentioned in a joint plan, included three short-term joint staff training events for teachers, promotion, dissemination and valorization activities to ensure the achievement of the proposed objectives. The results of the project are an indicator of the successful development of the proposed activities. Among these we mention: •3 short-term staff training events for 38 teachers •3 workshops organized during mobilities: Special Needs Children (in Romania), How can students be active in classes (in Turkey), Strategies & methods to reduce absenteeism used at Newark school (in Malta). •3 parent-child workshops and workshops for teachers (over 250 participants) •an Open Space Conference with the theme Reducing Absenteeism in Children with Special Needs • 2 articles on absenteeism published in professional journals in each partner school, to share the knowledge acquired within the project •an online National Symposium on absenteeism, organized by the coordinating school that brought together papers on absenteeism from 46 educational specialists. • a Facebook and Instagram account created to ensure the visibility of the project and the promotion of Erasmus + program. • printed materials: calendars, pens, leaflets, keychains, caps, T-shirts, diaries, bags, banners, flags, rollups that ensured the visibility of the project •press articles and videos published in the participating countries to make the project and its results visible •a Photo-voice exhibition on e-twinning in which teachers and students published pictures of activities together •The Guidelines of good practice in preventing school absenteeism in case of students with educational difficulties Besides direct beneficiaries, the project addressed other categories of interested persons. Other teachers took part in the project as volunteers. Students were involved in activities and in organizing visits, demonstrative lessons, parenting sessions. The parents participated together with teachers and local authorities in information sessions on motivation of children with special needs, age peculiarities, absenteeism. At national level, other teachers were informed through the articles and symposium on the project results. During all the project implementation we made use of online media to communicate, to share activities and we used e-twinning platform to share photos. Through the Good Practice Guide, available for anyone interested, the experimental methods can be further used by specialists, both as a tool for reducing absenteeism and as a basis for further research on the subject. Teachers in participating schools were equiped with knowledge and tools useful in preventing / reducing absenteeism. In the long term, professional and personal development of the teachers results in the institutional development of the schools with effects on school presence and motivation. The activities within the partnership had benefits for all the schools involved. As a collateral result of the project is that of the future collaboration with Newark School Malta, as a course provider in another Erasmus + project - Cross the Bridge carried out at CSEI C. Paunescu (2019-2021)