Healthy Teachers
Start date: Jun 1, 2016,
End date: May 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
La Gaviota is a public school located in Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid. The school has 645 students, 40% being foreigners. Students’ families come from a low socioeconomic background. Most parents only have a compulsory education certificate. Regarding their employment status, most of them are unemployed. In this discouraging environment, we have reached the conclusion that our students’ interest in school has decreased and we find it difficult to motivate them. That is the reason why we, the teachers, are not only looking for new teaching methods, but also for participation in school projects locally, nationwide and worldwide. Our next aim is to do a Etwinning project about healthy feeding and physical activity with our sixth grade puplis for the next year. However, we found the need to keep on learning in the healthy area in order to deal with this aim.We believe that the students who have less future expectations will be looking forward to joining this project in which other European schools participate. Likewise, they will improve their linguistic skills and show interest in English and other subjects.The reason for presenting a teacher training KA1 project is that we need to update our methodology, find out new working strategies, especially those related to health and well-being, which is what our projects – the PEAGE, the vegetable garden, healthy breakfasts, playground games and the Etwinning project – focus on.The “Healthy teachers” course, to be held in Lahti, Finland, from July 30th to 3th 2016, could be a good opportunity for four of the teachers from the school. This course is offered by Edukarjala, a training and consulting services institute. The contents of this course are, among others, new sport activities, nutrition, support group, school curriculum and healthy lifestyle. The proposed objectives are: to improve the teachers’ competence level by means of the training, to reinforce the cooperation with schools in other countries, to make our students, their families and the rest of the educational community aware of the importance of a healthy lifestyle by means of physical activity and eating habits, and finally to motivate and encourage our students to work harder and participate in school projects, trying to lower the school dropout rate. The expected impact in the participants are the acquisition of new ideas to incorporate into the school projects, the relation with other international schools improvement, the active participation in eTwinning project, a higher level of linguistic competence and the improvement of our teaching. Regarding our students, we expect an improvement in their eating habits, their awareness of the importance of being healthy, their interest in school, their academic results and the lowering of the school dropout rate. What we expect from the students’ families is the awareness of the importance of healthy eating habits and their kids’ physical activity, as well as the interest in their studies, and a more active participation in the school activities. Moreover, the expected impact in the rest of the educational community is the knowledge about the Erasmus+ program and other ways of working at school such as educational projects. Finally, the long term benefits we pursue are lowering the school dropout rate and avoiding school failure.