Poland

Our school

The Vocational school in a small town called Bychawa is situated in the south eastern part of the country, where the unemployment percentage is very high (10.85%). Teenagers attend our school from the town and surrounded villages. These young people usually have fewer opportunities in terms of education compared to their peers in larger cities. Many of them live with their grandparents because their parents left to work abroad. About 50% of our students have very poor financial resources. However, the students are very active and motivated, even if their parents do not have high incomes. The participation in this European project will allow them to discover other realities, let them to achieve new skills and knowledge so that they will become more self-confident and independent in the future. The project is also the opportunity to increase motivation to learn foreign languages. We have already gained some experience in the implementation of projects funded by the European Union. We implemented the Comenius project ( “Open up to meet others” – 2011-2013. and the Leonardo da Vinci project ( “Improving car repair skills and entrepreneurship” the internship training for twenty-one students of our school, in France, 2006). What is more, the project under the 'Internships abroad for trainees and trainers' program, was for 20 high school students. They took part in three week internships in France, last year. Our school’s main objective is to help students become more self-confident and to increase their self-esteem, to be more motivated to improve their own performance and to be more challenging and finally to work with energy and passion to obtain specific goals. We believe that a school must be able to motivate the students for the education success and also to support and enthusiasm the teachers, knowing that their quality is one of the variables in pupils' performance. The staff involved in this project is formed by teachers who have practical experience in National and EU projects. They have also been actively involved in projects connected with students who are at risk of abandoning school (high school drop-outs) and have attended many seminars involving disadvantaged students. They have attended courses regarding how to apply ICT in education and they have also a large experience in organizing and developing dissemination and exploitation of activities and results of projects. The key persons involved have strong organizational and communicational skill and have critical and responsive attitudes to innovation and professional improvement.