CICERONES IN EUROPE. INCLUSIVE PROJECT

The Project Cicerones in Europe has involved more than 120 students aged between 14 and 18, four secondary schools from France, Italy, Czech Republic and Spain as the coordinator of the Project. Its main objective has been inclusion and equality of opportunities for all the participants. This project has been a unique learning opportunity for all the participants. In our secondary schools there are great diversity of students, with different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds and learning abilities. But all this hasn’t entailed any obstacles to develop the project, the total funding of the project by Erasmus + program has allowed all the participants have enjoyed the experience free of charge. This project has given a unique opportunity to all those students who, taking into account their socioeconomic backgrounds, wouldn’t have been able to carry out this type of activities. It has been rewarding to fulfil the main objectives of the project: enabling the equality of opportunities, promoting the participation, participation and cooperation among all the participants from the four countries. Cicerones in Europe has allowed those students with higher abilities in foreign languages (Cicerones) have guided and accompanied their school mates whose families’ socioeconomic situations do not allow them participate in this type of activities. On the one hand, the Cicerone students have consolidated their skills in foreign languages and guided and supported their mates in everyday situations they may have faced during the exchange. This project has encouraged the democracy and justice, allowing all the students from the schools which have taken part in the project to learn all together. No matter their personal, social, economic, cultural or disability situation.It has also developed our students’ abilities and the acquisition of cultural contents so the students have been able to settle in a European sociocultural sphere. It has allowed to strengthen the idea of the school as an educational community bound to the sense of belonging and shared responsibility, improving the school coexistence and preventing the school absenteeism.All The activities addressed to our students have awakened their interest in other cultures and their heritage, reinforced the coexistence with other students and strengthened the use of foreign languages as “lingua franca”. Cicerones in Europe has been a first step in the Europeanization of our school and we will be able to count with the project partners for following associations, increasing the numbers of schools involved following our main aim: inclusion.All the activities carried out in this project have advantaged the coexiting of the students outside school, not only from a personal point of view (allowing to develop their social skills) but also from an academic point of view (helping to create a pleasant atmosphere for the adquisition of new knowledge) The workshops in each mobility have achieved the aims of the Project. We have done a great variety of activities following different active methodologies with a clear and main goal: inclusion. Our students have gained different knowledge, skills and competences that will help them in their future.As for for the teachers, transnational conferences have been held. We have shared experiences, resources, institutions and programs related to school coexistence, inclusion and early school leaving taken in each of the participating schools. The communication among the teachers from the four schools have been constant and we appreciate positively the team work done. The project evaluation has been conducted through our participating students´ observing processes. We will use different tools, first, we have done surveys to find out their level of satisfaction while participating in the project, besides, we have assessed their involvement and number of participants in the school programs such as bilingual or plurilingual programs; we have analysed their academic results. Finally, we have studied their school attendance to check if the early school leaving had been reduced.