SCHOOL IS COOL !
Start date: Sep 1, 2014,
End date: Aug 31, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
CSEI Nr. 1 provides education services to SEN pupils from special school, from SEN pupils integrated in mainstream schools and is also a resource center for Sibiu County in the field of special education.
The center schools pupils with behavior disorders (ASD, TSA), with sever disabilities and difficulties of adaptation to society values. The rroma origins for many of our school’s pupils, the pour economical environment, repeated school leaving, lack of support from the family for attending the school, are also important factors of social disadvantage for our pupils. Many of the pupils who attend our school are older than their classroom colleagues because of repeated periods of school leaving at the mainstream schools where they started education and in many cases they had serious social problems like violent behaviors or low rate of school attending.
Another important part of our pupils is represented by children with severe disabilities like cerebral palsy, autistic spectrum disorders, severe learning difficulties and other associated problems. The school is also providing education services to pupils with mild learning difficulties from mainstream schools through itinerant teachers.
This context of diversity of SEN pupils, integrated in our school, requires different approaches, pupils centered didactic strategies, interactive methods of teaching/learning as play methods, hands-on methods, focused on pupil direct experience in learning situations. The use of these motivating methods creates a motivating learning environment, an „attractive” school that offers individual tools of development, tailored to pupils potential for an effective process of integration in the society and labour market.
„School is Cool !” project aims to develop new professional behaviors for the special education teachers through attending training courses aboard. The new competences and didactic strategies will be developed in the field of non-formal education and the pupil centred methods for a better approach of the school leaving problem.
The teachers will be able to design together a strategy for preventing school leaving and will apply in everyday teaching activity, methods centred to arts and play, to outdoor education, pupil-centred methods for the involvement of SEN pupils in their own education act.
The main beneficiaries of the training programs of special education teachers will be the SEN pupils who will improve their school attending rate and attitudes towards the school and towards the integration in society and labour market.
CSEI Nr.1 Sibiu wishes to send 10 special education teachers for training at courses certificated at European level. There will be teachers from all teaching areas from our school: special education teachers, working with severe deficiencies pupils and mild deficiencies pupils, speech therapists, physic therapy teachers, itinerant teachers and home-bound school teachers. This is necessary because the pupils-centred methods support the non-formal education for preventing school leaving, improvement of integration of SEN pupils in a school where every one finds his place in every activity of CSEI Nr.1 Sibiu.
The main activities will be:
Step 1: attending courses and seminaries abroad with themes of school leaving and teaching-learning through creative and non-formal methods
Step 2: designing a strategy for preventing the school leaving through applying the techniques acquired at the course, in the education of SEN pupils.
The main impact of the training activity of the teachers at courses held abroad will be an improvement of the institution itself. Therefore a strategy will be created for approaching the school leaving problem for SEN pupils; optional classes will be created on specific themes like outdoor education, play education, etc. The teaching-learning methods will have playful, interactive and attractive features. The extracurricular activities will benefit of the support of non-formal education for reaching the final aim, education. Therefore, the organisation approach will be focused on pupil, on the non-formal education benefits as a method of raising the pupils interest for learning.
On long term, the organisation will open new horizons caused by attending abroad courses, through the contacts established among teachers and through future partnerships.
The aim group SEN pupils will have the most benefits from teachers training courses held abroad. The strategies conceived after attending the courses, optional classes, extracurricular activities, proposed following the attended courses will run effectively on long term. The didactic approach, as well, will allow us to achieve an effective integration of a larger number of SEN pupils.
`School is cool !` wishes to make the school a fun, interesting, attractive place to be, a place where non-formal education becomes an efficient tool for inclusion and education of SEN pupils and most of all for preventing school leaving.