• LAS PETROCCHI

Our European Development Plan

The activities carried out in recent years in our institute reveal a desire to assert ourselves internationally and strengthen our network of European partners. The collaboration with schools in different countries, both within the European projects and from our own initiative, has expanded the horizons of our Institute but, at the same time, revealed unequivocally some gaps that need to be filled in order to improve the effectiveness of our actions and set ourselves more ambitious goals, both locally and internationally.

The most obvious gaps concern the English language skills, even the basic ones, for many teachers, especially those who teach artistic subjects, since English was not included in their own school curriculum. This condition causes problems in various school areas:

1. The growing presence in our classrooms of foreign students that need appropriate strategies to enable a fruitful inclusion.
2. The difficulty of training teachers for the CLIL methodology that is compulsory for the last year of high schools, because many teachers do not have language skills of middle level
3. Lack of involvement in Erasmus actions promoted by our Institute and therefore impossibility to enrich their experience at a European level, both for themselves and for their students, through participation in partnerships, job shadowing experiences, methodological courses and teaching opportunities abroad.

A language-training program for teachers was also initiated at a local level through the implementation of English courses in our school. However, we reckon that a course abroad could represent an important opportunity to set up a process of change in terms of internationalization and job motivation/satisfaction to allow a better response to the challenges of the current school and improve the quality of teaching and learning.

Training abroad also promotes open-mindedness, necessary to understand the social and cultural diversity in Europe that is slowly moving towards integration.

In this context, the CLIL methodology has been recognized as a key tool for intercultural learning also for students as they are given opportunities to develop language skills in a spontaneous way since they trigger dialogic processes with very different dynamics than in traditional language classes.

In the Italian school, the CLIL methodology has recently been introduced, and the first experiences date back to last year (excluding language high schools). Although the methodological and educational courses arranged by the Regional School for the few teachers with an advanced level of English, it is important to make the staff aware of the new methodology, including the teachers of English who are often called to collaborate in the process of planning and development of educational activities with teachers of different subjects.

Another current need, particularly strong, is related to the recent introduction by the Buona Scuola Act of compulsory internships/training sessions for students from the third year of high schools (200 hours in three years).

Our school is going to promote internships abroad for our students both in firms and in schools with similar technical/artistic education. It is also with the intention of creating a network of European schools that we want to promote visits of teachers and management staff abroad, aiming to:

1. share the best methodological-didactic practices
2. promote the cooperation for mutual learning and an exchange of experiences
3. expand the knowledge and understanding of the national and international policies and practices
4. encourage a process of change in terms of modernization and internationalization of the school curriculum.