The aim of our project was therefore to provide teachers with practical tools to deal with pupils' discomfort and/or school dropout and help them develop complementary skills to the technical/professional ones in order to be able to overcome life's difficulties. Specifically, we meant to: - acquire teaching approaches which can, at least partially, replace traditional methods with more dynamic ones focussed on the learner thus stimulating his/her need to take part actively in the learning process and freely express opinions and skills; - merge educational modalities with experiential ones belonging to everyday life so as to achieve the full development of our students in terms of social inclusion and make active citizenship become a natural part of their growth; - learn to develop students’ soft skills with the use of specific and valid tools which also need to be realistically proposable in an educational system based on subjects each of which has its own planning requirements.
Ours is a technical institute with over 1000 students specialized in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Chemistry, Biotechnology and CAT. Most of our students come from the lower middle class, with economic and/or socio-cultural disadvantage. The I.I.S.S. "Pacinotti" operates in Taranto, an area suffering for the following causes: - industrial crisis and consequent employment emergency - industrial pollution and consequent health emergency. The combination of health and work weighs heavily on families, generating anger and discouragement, leading to exhaustion and influencing the serenity of the students, many of whom, after the two-year period, abandon their studies to work and face family difficulties. As an Institute we therefore felt the need to enhance the soft skills of the young people, ie the "personal skills" applicable in different job ambitions as well as in personal life.