They are difficult to manage, with multiproblem a families, often in classes there are handicapped students, then there are students who live in “group homes”, students with more serious problems, the teachers have very little motivation and it is hard to realize a similar project. The area where we are is called Metapontino, a plan land where the main activities is agricultura and tourism; because we are on the Jonio sea and only for two months a year is developed the tourism; but here we note a lack of knowledge of our youths and students the area where they live. Our students don't understand the importance of learning, and for this reason they are lazy, without imagination to plan their future; so they don't have a project of life. The Vocational School ISIS Pitagora Policoro offers a variety of areas of study: • Electric - Electronic • Mechanical - Thermal • Clothing and Fashion • Chemistry – Organic • Informatics – Computer Science The context: the villages where our students live • The villages have about 4- 5000 inhabitants; Policoro is the largest town with about 15,000 inhabitants, here there are schools, offices and hospital etc; our students get to the school from these villages every day by bus • There aren’t any meeting points for students such as pubs, clubs discos etc…. • The villages lose population because of unemployment; there are few industries . • The economy is based on tourism for only two months out of the year and Agriculture is not modernized, and very often the Agricultural fields are abandoned, and farmers work for themselves. • The only meeting point for YOUTHS is the school. Many students come from families with various problems, such as unemployed parents, divorced parents, drugs, safe houses, etc • The students do not like the traditional teaching methods or follow the school’s rules. This sometimes leads to students dropping out of school early. They are looking for innovation and a new teaching methods that utilize technology, travel, and cultural exchange.
The school hasn’t done any European projects yet. Nico has been teaching at this school since last year and has experiences with a Comenius project at his former school. He noticed that the many difficulties in this school can be traced back to the lack of European dimension of both: students and school staff. As contact person of Erasmus+ he wants to contribute to achieve this goal. The "Erasmus-team" consists of teachers that work on BES, disadvantaged students; graduated in psychology, economics; teachers; English and ICT teachers, besides secretarial and laboratories staff. The school is lacking experience in the European context, but there are several reasons why they are an important partner for the project: 1. We want to include the European thought into our school curriculum 2. The project is needed at our school and at the same time the others can learn from us: In the area we have immigrant families coming from Albania, Romania, Tunisia and India that work in agriculture, and do work that Italians don’t like doing. Immigrant students are mostly integrated naturally because of the poor economic conditions that they share with the inhabitants of Policoro. But, our school is not well equipped to face immigrant problems; because of the many difficulties with the Italian students themselves. 3. We can contribute to the project because we have teachers that are specialized in dealing with disadvantaged students, psychologists and skilled ICT teachers. Our knowledge in the respective field will be useful for the other partners. Before, during and after the visit of our European partner we will invite immigrant and Italian families to prepare and share the project with meetings in the school. Another aim of this project is to step out of the geographical isolation of our territories: Sharing realities with the European partner will stop the desertion of students from rural areas to urban areas and we will foster the potential to not exploit the area for tourism. We wish our students to discover and become aware of the wealth and potential development of the rural and touristic areas in which they live in (unknown to them). For this purpose, we will prepare a Power Point presentation before the exchange, presenting the territory about natural, historical and cultural heritage resources.