France

Collège Saint Julien

600 pupils aged 11 to 16 study in Collège Saint Julien with the help of about 38 teachers. There is also a primary school in the same building. 

The school is located in the very city centre of Le Mans and has a very good reputation among the local authorities and the local population concerning teaching quality. Indeed our students get very good academic results when they sit exams or when they enter high schools.

Most of our students come from privileged backgrounds and their families mainly belong to the upper-middle-class at least.

Therefore they are used to travelling abroad to very exotic countries and have numerous various leisure activities. However, they lack contacts with people who do not have the same social opportunities. For example, there are very few immigrants in our school or students who have real learning difficulties .

All classical subjects are taught in St Julien : French, English, History, geography, biology, technology, mathematics, physical

education, music, arts,…

Our main motivations and aims are :

Improving respect and tolerance between people in a society more and more led by individual thinking, in order to help our students to become responsible citizens.

Increasing the knowledge of our own culture in different fields, and make our students able to share it in the best welcoming way.

Discovering other cultures and make our students as curious and open-minded as possible.

Sharing a positive project with our students, which can provide more cohesion, more motivation and more self-confidence for the students involved, and for teachers as well, by teaching in a different way.

We also expect to think about, enhance and why not change our pedagogical practices.

Key people for this project are : 

Sylvie Prieur (biology teacher)

Gwenaëlle Bourgeois (documentalist teacher)

Cécile Violeau (english teacher)

Our experiences since 2009:

2 comenius projects ( intergenerational relationships / European societies and values - united in diversity)

5 school exchanges with Finland / Poland(2) / Slovenia(2)

2 school trips in southern France to discover our antic Gallic/Roman culture

Based on this solid experience, our team can easily contribute to a successful organisation in a positive relationship with partners.

Our experience and local good reputation can easily be a large source of positive contacts with cultural sites or media, through our students' parents' personal or professional contacts as well.

We also plan through this project to create a communication tool for our city, specifically aimed at young foreigners, as every booklet is now designed and written for adults. This communication tool could also be a link with the cities of the partners of this project.