Students and teachers from the Secondary School “Constantin Stere” in Bucov, Prahova County, together with young people and teachers from Italy and Bulgaria, recently visited the Prahova County Council. The event was part of the events included in the strategic partnership project conducted between schools from Europe, entitled “Garden without Borders. Our spirit blooms in the Garden of Europe”.
In mid-April, 2017, a new stage of the Erasmus project called “Un jardin sans frontiere. Que notre esprit fleurisse dans le jardin de l` Europe’’ was held in Prahova. The project is funded by EU and it is developed by the Secondary School “Constantin Stere” in the Bucov commune from Prahova, in partnership with schools from Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and Portugal. The project was started on September 1, 2014, and it will end on August, 2017; its partners are Instituto Comprensivo Dante Alighieri Cornate D`Adda, Italy; School “St.St.Cyril and Methodius” Satovcha, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria; IES Carmen Burgos de Segui, Alovera -Guadalajara, Spain; Agrupamento de Escolas de Sao Martinho- Sao Martinho do Campo, Portugal, and the Secondary School “Constantin Stere” in Bucov.
The project addresses to the secondary school students in the partner countries – Romania, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain and Portugal -, aiming to motivate students to study and to help them to develop their fundamental abilities. In this context, through the proposed activities, the project’s priorities were to expand the digital abilities, to introduce new teaching methods and instruments, and to reach these objective by an exchange of good practices between the involved students and teachers, both locally and abroad, by the direct implementation in classes. The theme of the garden – “Garden without Borders” – was chosen because it provides a higher interdisciplinary interest, it is suitable for activities involving tasks of the concrete reality, and it allows direct work. We mention that the activities also referred to making brochures on various themes related to the title of the project, such as “Culinary Recipes for Local Products”, “Local Plant Maintenance Guide”, or “Smiles of History in the Garden of Europe”. There were also performed many activities related to the project’s theme, such as “Art and geometry in European Gardens”, “Let’s Know Spanish Gardens”, “Gardens in Easter”, or “Preparing the Garden of the School”. Not at last, learning basic concepts of communicating in the languages of the countries participating in the project was one of the achieved objectives, hour of study being made to improve communication in French, which is the official language of the project.
Besides the activities organized at local level, the project also involved six project meetings for students and teachers, and also that each team of the project consisting of students and teachers participated in activities in each partner school. Thus, given that the school in Italy is the educational unit that coordinates this project, the first transnational meeting was held at the end of 2014 at the Instituto Comprensivo Dante Alighieri Cornate D’Adda, which was attended by eight teachers of the Secondary School in Bucov, too. Then, in March 2015, the meeting was organized in Spain, at IES Carmen Burgos de Segui, Alovera-Guadalajara, where 20 students and 4 teachers from Prahova were present. From April 19 to 25, 2015, the Secondary School in Bucov was the host of the transnational meeting; students and teachers from the partner schools attended the meeting in Romania. Thus, the return of the representatives of the schools included in the project in Prahova, in April this year, was a proper occasion to review the already achieved stages, especially because the events are going to end. The last transnational meeting of this year will be held in Italy, at the Instituto Comprensivo Dante Alighieri Cornate D`Adda.
