Summary of our project entitled: Tackling Educational Disadvantage and promoting inclusion through celebrating culture language and heritage in our schools with a specific emphasis on STEM subjects - Science, Technology, Engineering and MathsContext/Background of the projectBeech Hill College is a designated disadvantaged school (DEIS) in Monaghan Town. The school has a growing population of pupils from Lithuania approx 20% pf the school population. In a recent survey 68% of these pupils stated that they 'felt they did not belong at school' These pupils parent's work in low paid jobs and have little or no experience of further education. In response to this School Management has gained the support of the Post-Primary Language Initiative and Beech Hill College now offers the Lithuanian langauage as a subject for the Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate.The motivation of this project is to tackle the educational disadvantage of these pupils by building relationships between the Irish and Lithuanian pupils, showing these pupils that Beech Hill College values their Language, Culture and Heritage and unltimately undertaking student mobilities with Vilniaus Gabijos Gimnazija, Lithuania. The motivation of the partner school in Lithuania Vilniaus Gabijos Gimnazija is to improve the oral communication and presentation skills of a number of gifted students who they are presently targetting for focus interventions. They have discovered through surveys that these pupils experience anxiety when speaking English in public. Through participating in the various oral presentations during the student mobilities their knowledge of, and confidence in speaking English will undoubtedly improve. Objectives of the projectThe exchange of good practices whilst endeavouring to:1. identify the causes of educational disadvantage.2. build relationships between teachers, parents and students in both schools.3. increase a sense of belonging/inclusion in the Lithuanians pupils in Beech Hill College.4. increase the confidence of the educational stakeholders in Gabijos Gimnazija through showcasing Lithuanian culture and heritage.5. showcase and workshop best practice in both schools in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.6. share teaching methodolgies and learning resources through the creation of a digital learning platform . Number and Profile of participantsPartcipants will be selected due to a perceived need, there will be an interview process. In total 22 students will be selected - 11 from each school. In Beech Hill College 5 students from an Irish background and 6 from a Lithuanian background (who are currently studying the Lithuanian language as a Junior Cycle subject) will be selected. In Gabijos Gimnazija11 students who are studying English will be selected. Carrying out the projectA team of teachers coordinated by the Deputy Principal in each school will be responsible for delivering the project. This will require regular communication to create a partnership, share good practices and plan mobilities etc.The impact of this project will be far-reaching, it will change perceptions and build friendships. The end result will be that the students from both schools will increase in confidence and will feel valued. Relationship building will take place between all the stakeholders of both schools. Teaching methodologies and resources will be shared. During the student mobilities there will be an emphasis on STEM subjects which will result in the sharing of ideas and innovative practices. There will be a thorough evaluation of the project to gather the opinions of all stakeholders including parents, teachers, students and community groups.

<< Objectives >>The main goal is to increase quality in the work and practice, and build the capacity of participating schools in the field of international cooperation and strengthen citizenship competencies, and ecological awareness of students, by exchanging experience, developing comprehensive and cross-curricular programs of workshops and practical learning tools by Dec. 2023.It will happen through the exchange of experience, extending schools' extracurricular offer, raising awareness and shaping skills.<< Implementation >>Activities planned: A1: KICK-OFF WORKSHOPS for partners' staff - project planning and design thinking on the elaboration of ECO-JOURNALISTS programA2: LANGUAGE WORKSHOPS A3: INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISM WORKSHOPS AND STUDY VISITA4: INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL WORKSHOPS AND STUDY VISIT A5: ESTABLISHING THE CIVIL MEDIA WEB-PORTAL AND PRESS OFFICE to raise awareness of schools' community and local communityA6: PROJECT MANAGEMENT including promotional activities and evaluation<< Results >>As a result, partner organizations will gain new materials and tools to expand and increase the quality of their practice in the field of civic education of their students, which will build the capaci of partner orgnaizations. The idea of eco-journalism will be spread around students and other schools, that will be able to use the program developed within the project. Project partners' staff will also have a chance to get additional experience in the implementation of the international project.

"CONTEXT/BACKGROUNDThe context where we start is the current year work on a four-country collaboration on the design of several itineraries in our countries and the need to take a further step to translate them into our mother languages, as well as the in situ check in of their adequacy.OBJECTIVESTwo are the European initiatives which have been inspirational to us. At a more precise level, the Decision (2017) to celebrate The European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 . Its slogan ""Our heritage: where the past meets the future"" made us think of a way to connect both and we found the best tool in an app. It seeks many of the objectives fixed in this Decision, among which we would like to stand out the ones related to more integrated and sustainable approaches, to promote debate, research and innovative reuse and enhancement of cultural heritage, to promote solutions which make cultural heritage accessible to all, including via digital means, or to facilitate the dissemination of research results to a broader audience. We have sought and seek to continue our task of promoting and sharing both our tangible (buildings, monuments, ..) and natural heritage. To do so, we will create both historic and geologic itineraries. We wish to leave an imprint beyond 2018 and follow six of the ten long-term impact projects that the Commission, in collaboration with the Council of Europe, UNESCO, and other partners, will be running on engagement, sustainability and innovation.At a different level, the Europe 2020 targets show us, Spain, and one of our partners , Hungary, among the countries with the highest drop-out rate (Spain 19% and Hungary 12.4%). On the other hand, we find two of our partners among the lowest rate, being Czechia (6.6%) and Lithuania (4.8%). Thus, we aim at creating a synergy among all four countries which may contribute to the EU target, reducing up to 10% the drop-out rate.NUMBER AND PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS120 students and 24 teachers will participate in the mobilities, though many more will benefit from the blended learning activities we have and will design during these two years. Teachers will have a sufficient or above average level of English to ensure communication among all four partners. It will also apply to students. Both written and oral skills, along with empathy and social competences will be core at the selection process, not to forget level of committment with the tasks to be carried out and their quality.DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIESEvery country will design, in their mother tongue, their itinerary, with a solid base of previous research, will translate it into English and will share it with the other three countries so that we all translate every toher's itineraries to our mother tongues. We will record them and upload them to our apps. When meeting we will do a part of this job and will check their adequacy.There will be many other activities carried out in orden to fulfill this main task.METHODOLOGYThe methodology has been designed along two main guidelines. In the first place, Problem-Based Learning, by which we find out the need in some of our city of having an app designed to learn about the place they visit. Secondly, Service Learning, by which two institutions collaborate and through mutual help, ellaborate a product which will be offered, for free, to our city. In our case, the University of Alicante will provide with students from the degrees of Translation and English Studies, who will mentor our students in their translations and their recordings. The final product will be enjoyed by our visitors through the app, accessible from the City Hall website.Along the two years, we are also going to collaborate through blended learning, to prepare those itineraries. We will design activities through the safest platform we know, etwinning, through Forums, Chats, econferences, a diary, and uploading the materials we cproduce.RESULTSWe aim at creating four apps, one per country, where we will upload the itineraries hosting the written and audio versions of the stops to visit for public use.IMPACTThe impact can be viewed from two perspectives, the most measurable one is the enhancement of the English language, but we aim further. We aim at developing a wider view of languages as different from Spanish or English as Lithuanian, Check or Hungarian, admiring their beauty and the treasure they host. Culturally, getting to know their cultural heritages will also be a turning point in our students' lives.We cannot forget the impact on teachers' careers participating in this project means. It is a milestone as some of us have already experienced. The school's curriculum can also include tasks created now on it.LONGER TERM BENEFITSWe regard Erasmus+ as a starting point. We wish to build solid and lasting relationships with our partner countries and plan to build a system to continue working together, through mobilities and virtual cooperation, making blended learning our focus."

The idea of our project came from the necessity of offering our students curricular activities complemented by extracurricular activities, with a special emphasis on developing their various skills, on also giving chances to 'underprivileged' students and diminishing exclusion, drop-out rates and school fastigue and on giving them the chance to discover and unfold their diverse intercultural skills. Students of each school set up clubs (ISC = International Student Club) at their school. These were included in a “Europe Center” at school, which coordinates resources, meetings and topics. This center started to reach other European schools, creating a European network and international clubs, working on the same project / topic. These concentrated on topics relevant for Europe and the future. The following clubs were created dependend on the interests of students and teachers in each school: 1.Media /Journalism Club 2.International Job Market Club 3.Company start-up Club 4.Debating Club 5.Travel Club 6.Eco Club Considering the variety of issues that were addressed in the clubs and the flexibility of our project, we achieved that many students and teachers found the topics attractive and joinend the clubs. Moreover, each center was able to develop in time, as a result of dissemination activities, the possible impact on the centers by the products of the project and the creation of new ideas, both during the project period and beyond.The clubs encouraged students to gain knowledge and to understand , compare and evaluate different attitudes and habits of the countries, to grow awareness and to develop social, economic, professional and linguistic skills and entrepreneurial thinking and acting. They worked together via different communication tools like the project homepage, in the internet forum of the project, video conferences, eTwinning etc. The results of the club projects were finished at international partnership meetings. Learning/teaching/training activities, were presented, evaluated (analysis SWOT with questionnaires) and published ( e.c. www.sifec.eu). The activities created a broadening of options in job orientation, more flexibility on the job market and the students' private life. Our project has the chance to be permanently disseminated because, after the end of the project, the Europe Centers remains an important component of each school and is able to develop other types of European cooperation. The results of the individual clubs were documented as project results and were published as an inspiration for similar projects for other schools. The project also emphasized how schools could install certain clubs in the lessons of various subjects. The structure of international cooperation that was built up and tried out in the project was documented extensively and was offered to the schools in Europe as a readily usable structure.

The project entitled “Art & Literature in Education's Nature! Is it an A.Li.E.N.?” is to be implemented by six schools: Turkey,Lithuania,Croatia,Spain,Italy and Greece(school applicant). We are all experienced and full of enthusiasm schools with a serous Etwinning and Erasmus footprint so far. Our school and local communities are looking forward to this project with great interest. Giving children access to all varieties of literature is extremely important for their success. It provides students with opportunities to respond to literature; it gives students appreciation about their own cultural heritage as well as those of others; it helps students develop emotional intelligence and creativity; it nurtures growth and development of the student’s personality and social skills;Developing positive attitudes toward our own culture and the cultures of others we help for both social and personal development.Exposing children to quality literature can contribute to the creation of responsible, successful, and caring individuals. In this way future leaders will be nurtured by developing students' social and emotional skills, communicating internationally in the arts. Arts education on the other hand is often said to be a means of developing critical and creative thinking by developing skills that enhance performance in non-arts academic subjects.Emphasis on both Literature and Arts education can have a positive impact on the three subsets of skills that we define as “skills for innovation”: technical skills; skills in thinking and creativity;behavioural and social skills.It is crucial to empower our young generation to tackle with future challenges and to be competent enough for the future world where they will be leading the society and economy as adults. Our objectives are A) to improve -students competence of Learning to Learn – identifying and leveraging personal strengths and preferences in a way that enables subsequent learning -competence of Multi-literacy -communication competence (meaningfully exchanging ideas with others) make up the rest of these learning tools-cultural competence when students successfully navigate different values, ideals, and traditions interacting and cooperating with others- work and Entrepreneurship competence collaborating and negotiating with others to create new solutions at school and in the broader community- creativity competence- multilingual & digital competencesB) to share, pass on and construct Collective MemoryC) to tackle early school leaving and disadvantageD) to include innovative learning approaches E) to enable cross-curricular collaborationF) to promote the STEAM approach through interdisciplinary teaching with the involvement of all academic disciplines (coordinating school awarded the Label Etwinning school was recently selected as STEM Greek school)to promote inclusive education.A rich variety of activities is planned to take place before, during and after the LTTAs: workshops, logo, poster, even sonnet creations, museum visits, cultural events, tales & legends are to immerge everyone into European linguistic, literature and art background and history. A creative combination of evaluation and dissemination activities, drama and short play presentations, mini films, seminar events, website designing and administrating, storytelling and meet the author (either virtually or metaphorically) sessions, even transforming school walls to “art galleries” will be presented in our S.H.AR.E. ending festival hosted by the project coordinating school in Greece.The methodology to be used is the student centred approach, inquiry based and cooperative learning, tailoring instruction to meet individual student needs (inclusive education methodology). Also the Project-Based and game-based learning with challenging activities, the Museum and gallery pedagogic strategies and the experiential education learning. During public speaking sessions (National oral literature, Art on the walls, My Erasmus story) we focus on integrating intensive experience and skill-building into the fabric of education. This approach to teaching and learning is centered on our belief that education should place equal emphasis on development of character and the intellect.The results and impact of our project envisaged is to be disseminated on regular basis via our website, the Erasmus and Etwinning Platforms. In situ diffusion activities in all countries will highlight the potential impact of our efforts and reinforce longer terms benefits. The A.Li.E.N. project footprint will inspire our school and neighbour school communities and create a school atmosphere with more attractive education and training implementations, in line with nowadays individual needs and expectations. The increased competence in transversal skills (like social, civic, intercultural and language competences, critical thinking, digital skills and media literacy) will be the long lasting benefits of our Project.