The 2nd High School of Larissa is a central one and the most populated High school in Larissa, the capital city of the region of Thessaly, central Greece

It is a lower secondary school which provides basic and mandatory education following the national curricula and teaching methods of formal education. The field of teaching is general education including language, maths, science, history, religion, geography, biology, chemistry, foreign languages, music, arts, civic education, home economy, ICT and physical education classes. All subjects are compulsory on lower High Schools in Greece except of the second foreign language’s choice. The aim of our school is to develop an average level of basic knowledge and skills which allow our students to decide upon their future in education. Besides that activities are organized to support a creative and inspiring atmosphere at school and make learning joyful. Students ages are from 12 to 15. The number of students is 450 and of teachers 32. Most of them are Greeks but there is also a small percentage of students who belong to other national groups like Albanians , Romans and Bulgarians. Students with learning difficulties especially dyslexia come to school supported by teachers of special education in the last four years. The majority of student’s families live in blocks of apartments not far from school so they walk to school.

- The school is situated in a vibrant urban area close to the city centre. It is a typical middle class neighborhood but in the recent years many families have been negatively affected by economical crisis and austerity and some of them are struggling with unemployment and high taxation. Especially families from an immigrant background are deeply suffering as they are losing jobs or have their income reduced. It means fewer opportunities for their children, as it is common in Greece parents to pay for extracurriculum activities. Both social and economic situation in Greece makes the role of school crucial in student’s life as it is asked to address their needs and provide a happy and creative environment for them and make them feel less vulnerable.

Our students are almost teenagers they can feel and have an idea of what real life is. They start wondering about their future and the dynamics offered to them. After leaving high school they either continue to upper High School, or go to a vocational school. In both cases they luck any practical achievement of what they have learned at school already they usually forget most of them and they face difficulties to continue with their studies. The most important is that without developing practical skills at school they are usually helpless as adults to undertake responsibilities in their everyday life and they depend on professionals for almost everything. For the reasons mentioned already we consider very important for our school to be a partner in such a programme.

-Facing new challenges on everyday life schools has to be flexible and adjustable in current circumstances to examine and identify priorities and what are the real needs of its students and teachers in order to provide them with the necessary resources, to support them with new skills and make them competent for their future. Formal education seems to fail forward if it doesn’t manage to apply to practical skills also. By realizing that teachers should search for a different approach and try to find out what are their students real needs. They need to adopt different learning methods and adopt new learning tools to make students familiar with a more practical way of thinking and acting. This is possible when students learn to combine academic knowledge with practical issues, when they start to learn by doing.

School subjects could be interesting, even more exciting when they implement a practical point of view.

Our school community during the past decade had been very active in organizing both international and national projects on environmental issues, diversity, democracy and human rights, immigration and refugees, culture and tradition. There have been organized several nobilities abroad and we have hosted students from European partner schools. Through such projects we aim to involve a big number of students and families to widen our knowledge and experience and become aware of major questions that are discussed on European national and local level nowadays. There is a cooperation with local authorities and local NGO’s to achieve our objectives and we keep strong ties with local community to promote our aims.

Many teachers have participated in Comenius programmes and have been experienced with students exchanges, others have been participants in Erasmus + training courses for youth workers or have attend trainings organized by the Council of Europe for education professionals. Many students have participated in several competitions through the years and have won first prizes.