Address: National College “Costache Negruzzi”

Country: Romania

 School website

Project: Preparing for a students’ Congress
 

Working language during the project:

• English
• Romanian
   

Themes of the Council of Europe campaign “FREE to SPEAK, SAFE to LEARN - Democratic Schools for All” covered:

• Improving well-being at school
   

Competences from the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (CDC) addressed and where / how they were integrated:

• Responsibility
  Students have to be responsible all the time, each has to understand that he/she is part of the team and the results depends on each of them. 
• Flexibility and adaptability
  Challenges may appear on the road to the result, therefore young people have to adjust quickly, be open minded, listen to others’ ideas and choose the best solution in a rational way.
• Co-operation skills
  Students have to work together and they have to be real teammates in order to reach the goal.
   

Target group age range:

• 15-19
   

Level of education:

• Lower secondary education
• Upper secondary education

Short description of the project:

Preparing for a students’ Congress 

In our school system, students receive information from their teachers and have to understand and to process this information, but, most of the time, they do not have enough time to think about each individual piece of information and/or to apply this. Therefore, some of them behave like robots. However, when they graduate at the end of secondary school they go to the university or they enter the labour market where life is different.

In order to prepare them for the time they leave secondary education, we, teachers need to “build” a responsible young adult, capable to connect information, to apply it into different fields and contexts, who is willing to look for solutions for each particular problem s/he faces and able to pay attention to others in order to choose the best one.

To reach this objective we involve them in team work in small research labs to find solutions to different problems. At the beginning, they decide rationally, taking into consideration each team member’s aptitudes and strong points and what is the main responsibility of each person in order to solve the problem. Discussions are an important part, as new ideas come up when they meet and talk about the research topic. We meet weekly in order to evaluate the work already done, to analyse next steps in order to solve the problem. While one student writes the article, another will be focused on the presentation. Even though Romanian is our native language, everything is written in English. In the end, they prepare a poster for the forum session, a poster with images to suggest the problem and a summary of the solution to the problem.

The presentations in school are attractive and interesting. Students observe their colleagues and ask them different questions about the topic. This session is the first real presentation before the Congress.

Knowledge in Maths, communication in English, co-operative work, adaptability and flexibility, an open mind to new ideas, thinking out of the box, capacity to analyse and synthetise together transform a student in secondary school into a young person capable of performing very well at university or on the labour market.

Aims/objectives

Students have to be responsible all the time, each has to understand that s/he is part of the team and the results depends on each of them. At the same time, students have to work together and they have to be real teammates in order to reach their goal. More than that, they have to adjust quickly, be open minded, listen to others ideas and choose the best solution in a rational way.

Expected results/outcomes

• Participation in a students’ Maths Congress; writing an article; presenting the article.

Changes

• No change.

Challenges you faced

• Developing co-operation skills, improving the English language knowledge of some of the students.

Time-frame of the project:

• November 2019-February 2020

Council of Europe materials on citizenship and human rights education used while preparing or implementing your practice:

• How all Teachers Can Support EDC/HRE: A Framework for the Development of Competences