Mare de Déu de l'Olivar II

Mare de Deu de l'Olivar (MDO) is a school in the town of Alaquàs with more than 40 years of experience and around 800 students between 3 and 17 years old. Alaquàs has a population of around 28,000 people and is located 10 km from Valencia. The school is divided into two centers, physically separated, MDO 1 and MDO 2, which respectively offer the educational levels of Kindergarden and Primary and of ESO, the latter being the centre that coordinates this project.

Belonging to the Mare de Déu de l'Olivar Parish, the school offers children an integral education, working and developing not only academic and professional skills, but also human values such as solidarity, respect, responsibility, effort, justice, friendship and companionship. In the last years, the European awareness in the school has increased because some international exchanges have been promoted to encourage pupils to communicate in foreign languages and to offer them a cultural approach and participation in cultural exchanges and Erasmus + projects, in particular with France (this will be the sixth year) and Germany (fifth year).

Our motivation to join and coordinate this Erasmus + project is to offer students a chance to get to know their emotions through different activities and provide them with tools to control them and to become more competent emotionally, empowering them to lose fears and be self-confident. This training will help them relate to schoolmates as well as to students from other nationalities, races, religions, etc. Apart from this European dimension , one of the main features and characteristics that distinguish this school from other schools in town is its traditional participation and implication in activities related to the art and drama field. Every year different pupils of different levels of the school create, produce and perform plays which are offered to all the school community. Also, we will create and offer an optional subject to teach them Circus.

We will also include a programme included in our PAT (Tutory Annual Plan) to work on the emotional competence of all our students. These experiences and abilities will surely add value and will assure the success of our Erasmus+ project by giving and offering our pupils new experiences, skills, knowledge and competence from which develop and share a European citizenship dimension.

The key people in charge of running the project will be the European coordinator, the European Projects Team, the psychologist, the team of tutors and the teachers in charge of the new Circus optional subject. In case these people leave, they will be substituted by another teacher from the team or from the staff. Regarding experience in the staff, one of the Physical Education teachers has been trained in Circus and magic and the Drama teacher has a great experience in acting and directing teenagers. As well as the psychologist who has been trained in emotional competence. All of them will participate and contribute.