Together - to get there Together - to get there is a two years project. Six countries are involved in the project: Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Italy, Spain and Greece. We think that school is a place to enlarge students thinking and environmental sensitiveness. By organizing and participating this project both students and teachers learn new motivational methods that enhance the development of life skills, mental and physical health, awareness of environment and ecology, critical thinking, research spirit and belonging to European cultural heritage. The topics of this project are environmental: land, water and air. The methodology is positive pedagogy and the way to teach is team teaching. We use the positive pedagogy according to Avola 2017. Avola has three themes in positive pedagogy: environment, well-being and learning. We have used all these themes in our activities. (Avola, 2017). The project starts with the topic Land. Then, later on, we have the topics water and the air. We also include some recycling and sustainable living in these topics because we think it is a start to care about the nature. The team teaching starts in the first transnational meeting. It means that teacher pairs plan and work together. Every teacher has a pair to work with. What is taught in the classes depends on the age level of the students. With older students it is natural to have deeper discussions and think more globally. All the transnational meetings last for 4 days. All the meetings have the same schedule: 1. day planning together 2. day teaching together 3. day learning together 4. day evaluating together There are many kind of activities in this project : Together tasks are for teachers. That means team teaching with the current topic. Coordinators tasks are for planning the project forward and evaluating it so far. After the coordinators meetings we have the whole crew meetings to show what is going to happen next and open the discussion. We learn! tasks are studying new items. It is time to find out new concepts. We care tasks are for making change in habits. We grow task is to learn how to grow but also emphasize the importance of the green planet. Dissemination tasks will be done back at home. The teachers show the students what did they have seen/learnt in the transnational meeting. The materials are in Teams/e Twinning platform. Got it! task is for students. They will document what they have learnt according to the positive pedagogy model. I know, I learn, I write and I care. This documentation is in Teams/e Twinning platform. Ask! task includes Skype sessions between the team teachers and his/her class. The students meet team teachers´class and they have an opportunity to ask about the things they want to know more. We assume that team teaching is not yet commonly used way to teach in European Schools. We hope that we can share the idea of empowering way to teach together and spread it forward. It is easy to do the team teaching together, step by step. We also think that positive pedagogy or at least parts of it are used in schools, but we would like to make it more visible in this project. All the team teachers will find their own way to teach. Together they are strong! New teacher friends from all over Europe can be a start of the life-long relationships. It is easy to continue team teaching in e Twinning platform for example. The schools are able to repeat the activities used in this project easily. These "learning by doing" activities are meaningful way to teach and learn. We also think that the students and the teachers learn more English and find it important to learn more and are encouraged to use the language. All the new cultural knowledge is interesting and increases peoples common knowledge. The whole project ends with the environmental week together in Italy. Before that the schools have had an Earth hour and made environmental promises. The environmental week is an excellent opportunity to spread the environmental sensitiveness to homes and to the cities. We have the environmental concern but we have no time to worry. We need positive caring for our lovely planet Earth. Together - to get there!
Together - to get there was planned to be two years project. Due to COVID-19, project duration was lengthened to three years. Six countries were involved in the project: Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Italy, Spain and Greece. We think that school is a place to enlarge students thinking and environmental sensitiveness. By organizing and participating this project both students and teachers learnt new motivational methods that enhanced the development of life skills, mental and physical health, awareness of environment and ecology, critical thinking, research spirit and belonging to European cultural heritage. The topics of this project were environmental: Land, Water and Air. The methodology was Positive Pedagogy and the way to teach was Team Teaching. We used the positive pedagogy according to Avola 2017. Avola has three themes in Positive Pedagogy: environment, well-being, and learning (Avola, 2017). We used all these themes in our activities. The project started with the topic Land. Then, later we had the topics water and the air. We also included some recycling and sustainable living in these topics because we thought it was a good start to care of the Nature. Team teaching started in the first Transnational meeting. In our project teacher pairs planned, co-operated, and evaluated together. Every teacher had a pair to work with. What was taught in the classes depended on the age level of the students. With older students it was natural to have deeper discussions and think more globally. Transnational meetings lasted for 4 days and in five the meetings we had the same schedule: 1. day planning together 2. day teaching together 3. day learning together 4. day evaluating together In Cyprus we could not go into the classes in a school day due to COVID-19. We studied the use of e-Twinning instead and visited the school building in the evening. In this project there were many kind of activities: Together tasks were for teachers. That meant team teaching with the current topic. Coordinators´ tasks were for planning the project forward and evaluating it so far. After coordinators´ meetings we had the whole crew meetings to show what is going to happen next and open discussion about the new topic to come. We learn! tasks were for studying new items. It was time to find out new concepts and innovations. We care tasks were for making a change in habits. These were also for awakening the environmental sensitiveness among the students. We grow tasks were to learn how to grow but also emphasize the importance of the green planet. Dissemination tasks were done back at home after Transnational meetings. The teachers showed the students what had they learnt in Transnational meeting. Got it! task was for students. Students documented what they have learnt according to the positive pedagogy model. I know, I learn, I write and I care. Ask! task included Skype sessions between the team teachers and his/her class. The students met team teacher´s class via Skype and they had an opportunity to ask about the things they wanted to know more. We assumed that Team teaching was not commonly used way to teach in European Schools. We hope that we were able to share the idea of empowering way to teach together and spread it forward. It was not easy to start team teaching in the beginning. But all the participants were willing to learn, and we did it together step by step. We did not know if the positive pedagogy or at least parts of it were used in schools in Europe. We thought it would make a great match with team teaching in the classes. Our aim was to make it more visible in this project. As a result we are proud to say that the team teacher pairs had a lot of dialogue. They communicated and had lots of didactic decisions to make. They found their way to teach together supporting each other. Together they were strong! New teacher friends from all over the Europe can be a start of the life-long relationships. It is easy to continue team teaching in e e-Twinning platform for example. This project´s activities can easily be repeated in the classes again. These "learning by doing" activities are meaningful way to teach and learn. Students and the teachers in this project learnt more English and English was used in a meaningful way and natural situations in the classes for example. Participants found it important to learn more English and were encouraged to use the language. All the new cultural knowledge was interesting and increased people’s common know Working with environmental topics was an excellent opportunity to spread the environmental sensitiveness to homes and to the cities. Students spent Earth Hour and made environmental promises. We found out that it is good to have an environmental concern and start making good acts. We need positive caring for our lovely planet Earth. Together - to get there!