Final Meeting Spain

 THE FINAL MEETING IN SPAIN

Final meeting in Elche. The meeting took place from Friday 31st March to Friday 7th April, with the main objective of officially presenting the project’s final products resulting from these three years. 47 foreign students and 22 teachers attended this event. The students were hosted by families, as we had been doing throughout the years. Likewise, most teachers were also hosted by Spanish teachers.

On Friday 31st March the official presentation of the partnership’s results took place. The event counted on the presence and support of former Prime Minister Mr José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, as the head of the Law of Historical Memory. The event developed in two parts. First, the act started right after the former Prime Minister’s arrival at the school, where he was welcomed by the whole educational community along with the mayor of Elche, the director for Cooperation of the Generalitat, the inspector of education and SEPIE’s director of school education, Andrés Ajo. The former Prime Minister also met the partners’ coordinators. Spanish students explained the project and, after a performance about the need for Historical Memory, he visited the school and he even got into a few classrooms, where some students asked him a large number of questions related to the project. Then we revealed a plaque in memory of the project and went to Elche’s convention centre, where we had an open presentation for the municipality and the media in general. The representatives of the local government, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, the National University of Distance Education, the teacher training centre and the representative of Amnesty International in Elche, as well as the mass media and the management teams of some schools all around the province attended the event. First of all, we presented a short version of the documentary about the project and then we presented the project’s website, http://www.lessonsforfuture.com/, and we explained its contents. Among others, Mr Miguel Ors, director of Pere Ibarra Chair of Miguel Hernández University, explained how the lesson plans had been chosen and their quality criteria. Last, we presented the hand-book with the lesson plans, which gathers a selection of all the material available on the web, whereas the former Prime Minister, after taking the floor, gave the certificates of participation to both the international coordinators and the Spanish students and teachers. The event had a great impact in the media. A lot of institutions, such as teacher training centres, universities or even associations, have required the hand-book and so we have delivered it to all of them with a multiplying effect. The project has also been honoured by the local cultural association “Tonico Sansano” for its youth distinction.

On Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th April, and with the approval of the inspectorate, we stopped regular lessons and several workshops were carried out all around the school, being compulsory for all students to participate in two workshops each day. Each partner, led by both students and teachers, had prepared two workshops in English: one about any topic related to the project (with an active and dynamic methodology), and the other one about the culture and history of their own country. Thus, we had 16 workshops going on alternatively so that all students could attend them all. At the end of each working day, four countries performed their traditional dances in the school yard.

On Wednesday 5th April a gymkhana was carried out in Elche, Alicante and the surrounding areas, where 12 groups of students and teachers of different countries had to track the province by bus or train in order to uncover certain clues. It lasted from 9am to 5pm.
On Thursday 6th April all students and teachers involved in the project enjoyed a guided visit to Valencia.

On Friday 7th April both foreign students and teachers attended lessons and took part in some of them so that they could get to know the Spanish educational system. After that, teachers held a meeting in order to share their doubts regarding the final report, dissemination, expenses and so on.
We did not celebrate the seminar about the Spanish educational system since we had had it during our first meeting, when Mr Pere Soriano, representative of the Standing of Secondary Education Headmasters, had been in charge of the seminar. This can be seen on: LINK

Anyway, we showed the teachers our school facilities and we explained them the resources we have to face early-school leaving and educational failure in comparison to the other schools of the project. We also agreed to exchange several successful methodologies in the coming school year.