Day 1

What an excitement the adventure begins. Today, 19 September, we begin the first mobility of the Erasmus+ project.

We started the day leaving the hotel and arriving at a school where we weren't expected. It turned out that the ICS Collodi-Marini enlarged by building a new building two years ago, where 6–10-year-old students attend and the old building has the high school pupils from 10 to 14 years-old .

We were expected in the secondary school. Fortunately, Ida, a lovely teacher, drove us there.

Once we arrived we received a very warm reception. Simona Quizi, the coordinator and head of the Erasmus+ project, was expecting us with a small homemade breakfast and introduced us to different school teachers. Then, Simona de Stefano joined us. She is the teacher in charge of the school library project.

Once this quick presentation was made, we were introduced to a couple of groups where the third language was Spanish with which we would carry out activities over the week. I think the students were just as keen to meet us and exchange questions. Students show an attitude of respect for teachers by raising and greeting them when they enter the classroom.

Throughout the morning we continued to know the spaces of the school at the same time we were discovering how the Italian education system and the school project work. It is a center with a fairly traditional pedagogy, but in contrast they have many classrooms where creative and functional activities are promoted (art class, technology, vegetable garden ...). Learner typology is similar to a center of maximum complexity, which is why they have given the library so much weight to create a link with the families in the neighborhood. Students go to school from 8:15 to 13:15. Despite having wide outer spaces and corridors, students by COVID protocols, still do not leave the classrooms for breaks, they stay in the classrooms for 15 minutes of rest. The afternoons are optional, but they told us they are all going and they take classes and reinforcing activities.

The secondary school building is very large, with the split from primary education they have been able to prepare classrooms for specialties as they have gained space.

The library is located on the ground floor with direct access and without architectural barriers, before it was on the top floor, with access from the street but in the middle of a corridor. Now the room is much larger and more diaphane. Shelves surround the room. And at the center there are tables that they use by grouping them according to the needs of the activity. There is also a beamer and a digital panel. We were shocked to see that their volumes are quite old and rather adult.

Once we had visited the whole building we were taken to the elementary building, where we first went by mistake. The building is very beautiful, self-sustaining and built following security measures for earthquakes, very frequent in the area. It has art classrooms, computing, cooking, technology... and classrooms for each year course. In this building they have started subsidized sustainability projects that have allowed them to carry out the construction of the hen coop, have solar panels and are now in a project to create a greenhouse to grow vegetables. The library of this center is a very large and welcoming space, made of wood, with many windows and high ceilings. It has a stage at a corner and an audio system for small concerts, performances. It catches our attention to see that the volumes the library has are very few.

It has been a day full of information, but lovely!