Coordinator: Laanila High School
The aim of the project is not only to introduce UN Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals to all our students, teachers, staff, and whole school community, but also to ambitiously implement a cornucopia of best practice by uniting our European schools in action.
During the three-year-project we will introduce all the 17 Global Goals, focus on four of them and "create an army of goalkeepers” who will spread the change-choices even broader within our countries and Societies.
The objectives are to develop pedagogy for critical thinking to equip students to research and actively work towards tackling the following four SDGs whilst developing critical thinking, communication, digital literacy and foreign language skills:
Goal 1: Poverty
Goal 8: Decent Work
Goal 12: Responsible Consumption
Goal 14: Ocean Pollution
Partners:
"Laanila High School", Oulu, Finland
"Svenska Privatskolan i Uleåborg", Oulu, Finland
"Lycée Antoine St-Exupéry", Les Avirons, La Reunion "Escuela sa de Miranda", Braga, Portugal
"IES Juan Antonio Fernandez Perez", Melilla, Spain "Ysgol Dyffryn Taf", Whitland, Wales
Introductions of our schools:
"Laanila High School", Oulu, Finland
Laanilan Lukio is a high school of approximately 330 students and 25 teachers in the city of Oulu. Laanila is a member of the certified Green Flag Schools, UNESCO ASPnet Schools and CertiLingua Schools. We have an active Green Flag and UNESCO ASPnet group of students who plan and implement activities related to sustainable development tutored by teachers.
Our recent themes have included co-operation with the communities in the neighbourhood, waste recycling and reducing energy consumption. Since 2011 we have also taken part in Comenius and Erasmus+ collaboration in three separate projects with altogether twenty-five other European countries. Our mutual partnerships in increasing students’ awareness on ecological as well as volunteering issues have been truly rewarding, beneficial and educating experiences. In addition to the Green Flag and UNESCO group, we have an active students' union which has enabled the students to improve their social environment by creating an encouraging, dissimilarities approving social atmosphere. The school has taken part in many projects related to active citizenship, for example organizing charity, taking part in the racism-free events in the City of Oulu and volunteering for kintergartens, old people's houses, primary schools and other local actors. We also offer courses in volunteering. The courses have been led by our own teachers and earlier also by an Oulu based Deaconess Institute, and the work is done for several local voluntary organizations such as The Red Cross, among others. The courses have consisted of theoretical studies and voluntary work during which students may e.g. work as a friend or a support person for mentally ill youth or single parent families, read newspapers for the elderly, go for walks with mentally disabled or visually impaired or help immigrants and refugees. Last year's course focused on senior citizens with whom students and teachers sang songs, played games, held quizes and completed "My Way" book on the life of each senior citizen involved in the project.
Our school can set an example for the other partner schools in volunteering for the good of the old and the young, the physically and mentally disabled as well as for the immigrants and refugees in our city as we already have experience of this from different school activities in previous years. Also the projects and good practices we have implemented with the university exchange students (Courses on Global Education) and the local Community College will be shared with our European school partners in this project.
We have set up a team of ten teachers and we will be responsible for co-ordinating the project as we have the necessary managerial and communications experience of this from previous Erasmus+ projects. The team of teachers involved in this project includes a wide range of relevant expertise including language/math teaching, drama, music+art, sport, IT, student counselling, institutional evaluation and school management.
"Svenska Privatskolan i Uleåborg", Oulu, Finland
Svenska Privatskolan i Uleåborg (SPSU) is a Swedish-speaking school in the city of Oulu in Northern Ostrobothnia. The school was founded in 1859 and is one of the oldest schools in Finland. It is the northernmost school in Finland with Swedish as the language of instruction. The school has approximately 240 students aged 6 to 18. The school works in close cooperation with Svenska barnträdgården (Swedish-speaking kindergarten) which is located on the same premises. Many students start their schooling already in the kindergarten, culminating in a matriculation examination at the gates of adulthood.
"Lycée Antoine St-Exupéry", Les Avirons, La Reunion
Saint-Exupéry High School is situated in Les Avirons in south-west Reunion Island, an overseas French department in the Indian ocean. There are about 1100 students attending academic and vocational classes. Saint-Exupéry High School also includes a Post Graduate Vocational College with 100 students aged 18-22.
The school offers an international teaching environment with specialist classes in English and Spanish. These are optional courses for motivated students who wish to extend their foreign language learning, through the study of economics and social sciences in English, or history and
geography in Spanish. Independent certification through Cambridge University and the Cervantes Institute attest the level of proficiency of these students. Each year, the school receives native speaking language assistants who promote an authentic linguistic and cultural approach.
Regular exchanges with Australia (biannual school tours) are organized, as well as regular visits to metropolitan France and Germany.
The social context of our school is comparatively good. However, there are some educational issues here, as all over the island - like illiteracy, gender issues, ethnic determinism leading to inequality - that are globally more important than in most regions of metropolitan France. In fact, as an ultra-peripheral region of the E.U, Reunion’s geographical situation in the heart of the Indian Ocean makes it the only European region (along with Mayotte) in the southern hemisphere and probably the most isolated. In this way, our students hardly feel part of Europe and this project, by making them exchange with other Europeans, will give them a closer approach and a better inclusion with the mainland. Choosing to focus on SDG Goal 1 Eradication of Poverty makes sense – in an island where more than 40% of the population lives below the poverty line and unemployment is nearly 25%, we stand as one of the poorer regions of the E.U: addressing these issues is vital for our student community. The wider range of the SDG Goals is also a crucial part of our teaching: Réunion is fully concerned with sustainable development at all levels: political, social, environmental, educational. This project will be led by an experienced team of teachers and administration staff, who have already conducted a previous wide-ranging Erasmus+ project successfully. Expertise is shared, and does not depend on one single element but on a combination of staff.
"Escuela sa de Miranda", Braga, Portugal
Sá de Miranda School is situated in Braga, one of the youngest cities in Europe (European Youth Capital in 2012) but also with a vast historical and cultural heritage in the North of Portugal. The school has recently aggregated with a former group of schools located in a periferal area, being the head-school of the present School Group Sá de Miranda, which includes all learning levels, from kindergarten to high school.
Sá de Miranda school dates back to the 19th century, and has played an important role in the region ever since. It started as a boarding school for boys, but has been a state school for 183 years. It is now predominantly attended by teenagers from the outskirts of the city and surrounding rural areas.
The total number of students is around 2250, 770 of whom attending Scientific-Humanistic courses, 213 Vocational courses, 1228 Basic Education and 40 Adult Education in the evening.
Trying to cope with the challenges of such a heterogeneous school population, the institution’s priority is to foster the holistic development of all its members, by promoting personal and academic growth. Thus, its main goal is to educate proactive, creative and critical citizens, by providing high quality teaching, by helping students discover their talents and develop their competences and acquired knowledge, and by promoting a scientific and cultural exchange within the educational community. To reach these goals, the life of the institution must be based on a set of underlying values, such as the pursuit of excellence, integrity, solidarity, cooperation and reciprocity, effectiveness and good resource management.
"IES Juan Antonio Fernandez Perez", Melilla, Spain
IES Juan Antonio Fernández Pérez is a high school which teaches Compulsory Secondary Education to students aged 12-16, Baccalaurate to students aged 16-18 and vocational training in gardening, cooking, restaurant, travel agency and social integration. At the same time, we have a class intended for the inclusion of migrants into the regular system of education.Most of our students are bereber in origin (70%),many of them coming from disadvantaged areas, so some of them are prone to social exclusion and others are pupils with special education needs. At the age of 16, when students are finishing their compulsory education stage, there is a high rate of drop-offs from the educative system and 30% of students just leave education without their CGSEs or any kind of academic or vocational qualification. The participation of our centre in this project means one step more in our constant fight against early leaving and abandon from the Spanish system of education.
In the current process of internationalization of our center, every joint action of our High School with another European centers is focused in acquiring different strategies to fight early leaving from the educative system, promoting social and cultural inclusion of immigrants in our center and enhancing school performance in our students from disadvantaged backgrounds or cultural or achievement gaps.
Being our center situated in Melilla, a Spanish city on the northern coast of Africa with 80.000 inhabitants, sometimes gives us a feeling of isolation from European mainstream pedagogic and didactic innovations so the participation in this project is a fine way for students and teachers to became aware of Europe, otherwise they would not stand a chance to get to know and enjoy other European educative experiences.In other words, they can by these projects,feel both the European and their own dimension.
"Ysgol Dyffryn Taf", Whitland, Wales
Dyffryn Taf is an 11-18 school in rural West Wales. 864 pupils attend the school which caters for all abilities, offering a wide choice of academic and vocational courses. The school has a very large catchment area over 400 square miles drawing from a predominantly agricultural setting. 8,6% of pupils receive free-school meals and there are 17% of students on the SEN register. The school is a naturally bilingual school with 18,8% of pupils speaking Welsh as the predominant language at home, and 19% speak Welsh fluently. There is a Welsh medium form in each year group in key stage 3 and Welsh medium teaching is also available in humanities subjects in this key stage. The school caters for pupils representing a full range of academic ability and socio-economic background. There are currently 105 pupils with special educational needs, including 25 who have statements.
School priorities include raising standards in literacy, improving the quality of teaching and learning, developing middle managers, improving attendance and learner autonomy- we feel that involvement in this project will assist in meeting these priorities in an exciting new pan - European context.
The school takes an active and leading role in international work and bringing the global dimension to life for our students. We feel this to be particularly important as the school is located in an area where there is currently very little ethnic diversity. Our learners will almost certainly have to leave to find better employment opportunities and we feel it is important to encourage them to broaden their horizons as early as possible and embrace and enjoy diversity.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti