Comenius 1 - the Gateway to Europe

The origin of the project

The third year of our adventure with the previous project of Socrates - Comenius programme was coming to its end. Our school with partners from Portugal (Ourem), Greece (Athens) and Germany (Schwelm) was in a project dealing with our students` free time activities. The headmaster of Hauptschule Ost in Schwelm, Mr Peter Suck was the coordinator of the project. He suggested another Comenius project to continue our cooperation.
The first challege was to choose schools from different parts of Europe and encourage them to join the idea. Peter`s efforts resulted in the biggest Comenius team we had ever been in. Eight schools from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Poland agreed to take part in the project. The coordinating school suggested the topic for the project - "Ways of improving students` autonomy and initiative in the process of learning", which was accepted by all the participants.

Preparatory visit

The first meeting took place in Schwelm in December 2004. The headmasters and Comenius programme coordinators from the participating schools met to define the project goals, plan the work and simply get to know each other. We also had the opportunity to do some sightseeing in the region.

First year of the project

In the first year we dealt with one of the most important factors influencing both students and teachers of our schools. We measured the level and range of violence among students and examined its impact on students` school results and their mood in school and at home.
We had three working meetings in Funchal (Madeira - Portugal), Kołobrzeg (Poland) and Svencioneli (Lithuania)



In Funchal the participants discussed how to
measure the problem of violence at our schools.
We decided to create a questionaire for students
which would reflect the problem.







In Kołobrzeg the results of the questionaire were
presented, compared and discussed.
Surprisingly the results were very similar in each of the participating schools. It occured that not many students experienced physical violence but quite a lot were objects of
verbal abuse, threats and picking on. Degradation, sadness and isolation were quite often feelings that accompanied these phenomena. So, it was obvious that serious and effective steps had to be taken to ease this problem. The participants gave some suggestions on how to deal with violence at schools, the most important of which were mediations (mediation teams) and engaging students in any activities that would promote identification with their schools and other students, respect for them and teachers and make them aware what causes violence and how to avoid it. After having implemented all the ideas to prevent violence the problem will be examined again with the same questionaire to evaluate our work.

The third meeting took place in Svencioneli (Lithuania). Its aim was to find out how to check the level of health and fitness among students at our schools, present and discuss programmes dealing with health and healthy lifestyle implemented in our schools. The team from Kołobrzeg presented the work and effects of our school mediation team and a recreational programme "Horse riding as a way to prevent violence and addiction."A questionaire to check the body mass index (BMI) was worked out to see what the general physical condition of our students was.

Second year of the project

In the second year we made most of our efforts to find out ideas, methods and activities which would make students more aware of how important is health in one`s life.
Nowadays children and teenagers have an easy access to a variety of products of the modern world like the computer, tv, internet. There is a lot of colourful and tempting things around them. It`s very hard for an average young person to assess what`s best for him/her. The attention thus should be paid to how to promote health in schools, which should result in fitter and healthier society in the future.

There were three working visits in the second year - Ventspils (Latvia), Kayseri (Turkey)
and Turi Vald (Estonia)

In Ventspils (September 2006) each school reported how the programmes concerning healthy lifestyle had been modified and how
they worked.





The presentation of the BMI survey was done in Kayseri in March. It proved that in some schools (Schwelm, Funchal, Gijon) quite a big percentage of students were overweight. As for our students, there were too many girls who were underweight.

The last meeting in the second year took place in Turi Vald (Estonia) at the beginning of June 2007. Conclusions after the presentation of the BMI made us work out and implement new
programmes to promote healthy food and healthy lifestyle.

Since April 2007 Comenius team of Zespol Szkol nr 2 in Kolobrzeg has been implementing a programme to promote physical activity as well as a proper diet. The title of the programme - "Keep fit" reflects its idea.
The students involved in the programme discuss the principles of a healthy, balanced diet, prepare multi-ingredient salads and choose a right diet referring to certain physical exercises. They also take part in different sport activities mainly swimming, athletics, cycling and skating (in winter). They have been very eager to promote the project in the area by organizing competitions between lower secondary schools in Kołobrzeg .

During the visit in Turi Vald each school presented their programmes, we could compare them, see the results and use the ideas in our work. The participants also decided to apply for grants to continue the cooperation in the following year (third year of the project). The topic for the last year of our work is "The development of my town".







Socrates - Comenius team of Zespol Szkol nr 2 in Kolobrzeg /Poland