“Valles del Luna”secondary is placed in Santa María del Páramo area, on the southeast of León county, Spain. Our school consists of a teaching staff with forty teachers and we assist one hundred and ninety-seven pupils , divided into nine groups, seven groups for obtaining the GCSE and two for the A levels.
Our pupils are very varied. Besides, there is a group of students with special needs, as far as learning is concerned; these students require special methodology, their curriculum must be meaningfully adapted. In addition to this, we have students with hyperactivity syndrome and with attention deficiency and among our pupils there are also immigrants and students belonging to ethnical group minorities (gypsies). These students show a clear lack of motivation with regards to the learning process, probably due to the very few future career opportunities in the area. This variety of interests is what has motivated us in order to work on this project. Before thinking about this kind of projects (European projects; e-Twinning or Erasmus +) all the “Valles del Luna” teaching staff started a process of reflection and analysis with the aim of becoming aware of the needs we have; and why our students don´t get good academic results. So, we have made up a working group formed by nine teachers specialized on different subjects, all those teachers volunteer in order to adopt an active role in the process of developing this project with the aim of contacting different schools, different methodologies, different ways of understanding rural life and the possibility of opening our school to the rest of Europe: we want to internationalize our school and to open our pupils minds to new and near realities.
We wish to refresh our didactic methodology, to update our knowledge about the didactic use of the new technologies, to reduce the index of school failure among our students, to diminish the percentage of absenteeism, to make our school more international. We believe that if we are able to reach our secondary objectives, we will also be able to fulfill our main purpose. In addition to this; if we involve ourselves in a European Project of collaboration like this one, with an interchange of information and a constant use of new technologies of information and communication (Skype, collaborative documents, motivational works with pupils…) we will also boost our students’ motivation, what carries a lower level of school failure, and besides less absenteeism. Therefore, we will have improved, we will have obtained better results this way and we will have reached our main purpose if we have caught up with our secondary objectives.
Other goal in mind is to start the process of making our secondary school more visible in the global world and abroad. In order to reach that, it is essential to get people to know us through international platforms like e-Twinning and all the possibilities that Erasmus + offers us. The people in charge of the project will be: the director of the school, the head of studies and the coordinator of the bilingual teaching section (English) of the school. The three people have a definitive post in this school and they are not leaving the centre. This will assure the continuity of this programme. They all have expertise in the topics of the project, digital and language competences. The school has not previous experience in European programmes.
