Colegio D. Diogo de Sousa (Braga)

Colégio Dom Diogo de Sousa is a private Catholic school, situated in Braga, Portugal. Besides being the third largest city, it is also a city with a young population. As a result, it was the European Youth Capital in 2012 and in 2018 it was nominated the European Capital of Sports.

Our school was founded in 1949 and has just under 2000 students from pre-school to grade 12. It has a stable staff of 163 employees. It is the teamwork among staff and students that is the key to the success of our school, which has been in the top national ranking positions over the past years. It is a school that not only promotes academic success, but also invests greatly in the well-being of its students providing them with modern, well-equipped facilities, from science laboratories, an auditorium, to two indoor swimming pools, synthetic football fields, among many others.

Furthermore, our school has given great importance to the fluency of foreign languages. Besides being a Cambridge preparation centre where students start English at 4 years of age, Latin is introduced at age 8 and a second foreign language (German, Spanish or French) is initiated at the age of 10.

We strongly believe that participating in this project will be a wonderful opportunity to expand/develop our teaching methodologies and experience new realities that otherwise would not be possible. It will be without a doubt a challenging experience since teaching is traditionally teacher centred and through this project we aim to help students more self-motivated, self-disciplined and take charge of their own learning process through teamwork, as well as becoming a conscious European citizen who is eager to take an active part in their own learning process. What is more, we strongly believe that this project will help students use the knowledge they possess to its full potential, as they will become more aware of their capacities and how to apply them. With this project we hope to achieve two main targets: the improvement of students’ academic success through active methodologies, teamwork, autonomy and self- confidence. From a teacher’s perspective, the development of innovative teaching methods/strategies, the chance to visit schools in other countries and compare them with our own. Moreover, we hope all the participating students and teachers will improve their cooperation, teamwork, planning and social relation skills.

Even though we are not Erasmus+ experts, we make up our lack of experience with a group of motivated teachers coordinated by a person in charge of international educational projects. The science department will be in charge of the project, but will count on the participation of teachers of a variety of departments like history, geography and arts. The managment team of the school will also be involved.