We wished to create "tailor-made" trainings to respond to the real interests and needs of our staff, bearing in mind the student-centered “philosophy”. We strongly believe in importance of internationalization of our Institute and wished to create unique opportunities to exchange good practices and opportunities for professional, personal, cultural and linguistic enrichment. Trainings abroad in stimulating environments led to new synergies among our staff; we also wanted them to make new contacts for future projects, to take cues for environmental education, new methodologies, for a greater participation of pupils in our community, for more effective digitization. By exposing our teachers to new realities, we wanted them to become promoters of European projects and to convey to pupils what they observed and learnt during their mobilities. As far as possible, we wanted to bridge the generation gap between pupils and teachers to offer a more stimulating and more pragmatic methodology so that we can prepare our students to face challenges of modern societies and make them capable of finding answers to current issues.
Our school, located in the suburbs of Palermo, consists of 3 different courses: linguistics, human sciences and economic-social. The teachers from all the 3 courses, the Administration Director and the Headmaster participated in this project. Bearing in mind the idea of the European Year of Youth, we have set specific goals to "rejuvenate our school" as one can deduce from the title of the project, responding to the real interests and needs of our staff and pupils. In order to carry out the project, we have renewed our collaboration with four European schools we had already worked with fruitfully in the past (student exchanges and eTwinning projects). All mobilities have contributed to a cultural and professional enrichment and were a unique opportunity to practice foreign languages in stimulating environments. Also, the pupils from all the visited schools were involved in the dialogue, and thanks to them our observations are much more exhaustive. The training courses identified on the School Education Gateway have contributed to the renew our teaching, to strengthen student-centred education as well as to improve the knowledge of English language in order to boost the internationalization process of our Institute.