day 1

Me and my colleague Sonia have started our adventure today (19th of september). This is our first mobility of this Erasmus+ Project. We are very excited to begin this adventure.

We started the day getting lost on our way to the school. The school has two buildings, one for elementary and the other one for secondary. So we went to the elementary one when we were supposed to go to the secondary one. We were lucky that Ida (a teacher) took us to the other building by car.

Once we arrived there we met Simonetta who is the one of the responsible teachers of the Erasmus + project. She introduced us to the other teachers in the school and we had the pleasure to taste delicious cakes made by them and we had a cup of coffee too.

Then we started the tour around the building, they showed us all the classrooms and introduced us to some groups of students (10 year olds and 12 year olds). A girl who was very good at singing sang a song for us (this girl is on fire!).

Later on we met the Headmaster of the school and Simona and Simonetta explained to us how their educational system works, as well as their school project. In Italy primary education starts at the age of 6 till the age of 10, then they have first grade of secondary school that goes from 10 to 14 and second grade of secondary that goes from 14 to 19.

We saw the library that has about 30.000 volumes. It has basically adult books because it is also opened to the population. They have religion and multicultural ones.

One of the things that differs from my country is that kids go to school in the morning from 8.15h to 13.15h and they only have a 15 minutes break in the classroom so they don't go outside to the playground. They told us that this is because of the covid restrictions.

They seem to use a traditional methodology and what really surprised me is that as a sign of respect kids stand up everytime they see a teacher coming in the class. There are quite a few students with learning disabilities and mobility issues. They have supportive teachers to give attention to those students.

We have also visited the Elementary building which is pretty new (builded 2 years ago) and it is a self-sustainable building. There are solar panels. Simonetta explained that as there was an earthquake all the city had to be rebuilded. This building was builded following earthquake security measures.

In this building they have a henhouse with some hens and a rooster. Families can have some eggs but they do a voluntary payment. They can maintain and buy new equipment due to the grant income they receive to carry out different projects. They are about to build a greenhouse to grow vegetables.

Here you can see some pictures of the school. We had a lovely day!