POLAND Białowieża

Zespół Szkolno-Przedszkolny w Białowieży

zspbialowieza.edupage.org

Our school is located in the tourist village Białowieża in the centre of Primeval Białowieża Forest . It is in the east of Poland. There are about 2200 inhabitants, the population living around is mainly Orthodox and Catholic. The school is the complex of kindergarten (children at the age from3-7), primary school (pupils at the age from 7-13) and gymnasium (pupils at the age 13-16). There are 166 pupils and 28 teachers. Most of our pupils live in the village , only 15% get to school from nearest villages. A lot of our students have problems with learning motivation, parents are too busy to be interested in the progress of their children's work , so we the teachers have to do our best to motivate them to study , to get the knowledge about the world. There are also students from Children's House.

Our students attend additional activities such as drama, sports and Belarusian language classes. To make our lessons more attractive we cooperate with research institutions which are placed in Białowieża. They are :The Mammal Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences , The National Park,BiałowieżaGeobotanical Station , The European Forest Institute and the Centre of Forest Education "Jagiellońskie". We organise the meetings and workshops with scientists who emphasise our students the problems with global changes. We have many lessons outdoors using educational paths in our forest . We want our pupils to realise the beauty of the place they live because they do not have much knowledge about the environmental issues.

Apart from two Comenius projects our school participated in an educational project "Ecorce" with the cooperation of The Białowieża National Park and Department Deux-Severs in France. The aim of this project was to interest students with the field of ecology and biodiversity by making researches on plants and animals living around.