Case Studies

Name of the teacher

Serena Cortecci

Email:

Country:

Italy

Subject taught:

Law and Political Economy

Years of experience:

26 (as tenured teacher and before)

Name of the School:

I.S.I.S. “San Giovanni Bosco”

School Typology:

Upper Secondary School

Country:

Italy

City:

Colle Di Val D’Elsa (SI)

Web site:

Background and Context:

The “San Giovanni Bosco” High School includes a High School section and a Vocational section. The High School section is divided into three courses: Language High School, Humanities School and Socio-economic High School. The Vocational one is divided in two courses: Industry and Handicrafts (Maintenance and Technical Assistance, Industrial and Handicraft Textile Productions, before called Clothing and Fashion course). There is a total of 943 students, of which 124 foreigners who represent a percentage of 13% of the student population, with representatives coming from different European and non-European countries (the most numerous is the Albanian and Romanian communities).
In Colle Val d'Elsa city, the foreign community most numerous is the one coming from Albania (26.9% of foreigners), followed by Romania (14.6%), Senegal (7.5%) and Morocco (7, 3%). Based on data provided by the Siena Provincial Social Observatory: from December 2013, Colle Val d'Elsa is the third largest municipality of the Siena province (after the city of Siena and Poggibonsi) for foreigners’ numerical presence (about 2400). The town of Colle Val d'Elsa promotes from long time the integration and belonging sense to the community also through the action of institutions present on the territory, as the Intercultural Foundation and Islamic Cultural Center. Important is also the activity carried out by voluntary associations that are involved in hospitality and literacy of the foreigners.
The school has multimedia classrooms, language, scientific, IT, mechanics and textile labs. There is a library within the school, the auditorium used for conferences and meetings and from this year, an auditorium available from the entire Colle Upper Secondary School campus. Physical education is carried out in a building, that is part of the institute, and in a smaller gym.
From a few years, our Institute, just in order to foster inclusive processes and improve the quality of school life, experiences innovative educational activities in the Socio-economic course classes with the objective that such practices will be expanded/generalized to all the courses.
In fact, the activity management of this course, is based on didactics for thematic classrooms, democratic and cooperative learning spaces that are prepared by teachers and students, and that stimulate an operational and interdisciplinary approach.

Factual Description:

This project was born in strong connection with the experience undertaken with “Colle-ga-menti” and from the will of the school to offer itself and to be a place where to promote values. The school would be able to develop in the students the belonging sense to the community and to experience an alternative and innovative idea of “stay at school”, which passes through a stronger interaction with the territory and with the appreciation of individual talents.
The project is coordinated by a group of teachers and it is forerun by a first experimental phase started last school year. This phase led to the realization of some radio broadcasts in podcast which have directly involved the students of some classes of the school.
The Creative Communication Workshop is structured by three segments:
1. Press Office;
2. Media and documents;
3. Radio.
The project was developed within the school through the site and the students were able to join, selecting the segment in which were interested. Based on expressed preferences, some working groups were formed. The lab is active all the Friday from 2 P.M. to 4 P.M.
The activity is developed in the 79 room of the school and, in fact, our radio is called “79 room radio”. The students have made their logo and jingle, chosen through a contest.
The students organised the interview together with an appropriate and expressive musical selection. Subsequently, the radio group manages the recording and monitoring of radio broadcasts, which are published in the school site now.
The students that participate to the project came from different classes of the High School courses of our school, therefore they express different educational courses (curricola) and also different level of age.
This planning experience allows the teachers to train themselves together with the students in a mechanism of reciprocal learning and of exchange of competences facing with current issues and matters related to the own territory.

Activities carried out:

Realization of the contest by making jingle and logo.
Setting-up of the room 79 designated to host the press office and the radio.
Realization of an interview with a contemporary poet (a teacher of the school which is the winner of a literary award).
The interview with two lawyers who have presented a seminar regarding the issue of “Trust and democracy, migration and integration” is currently underway in our school.
The young people inform themselves and look for news on facts and events that can be told by students through the radio instrument.

Assessment and lesson learnt:

It is observed an improvement of students’ participation to school and community life, experimenting a different way to live School.
The School is becoming open to the territory, its resources and institutions, actively involving the young people in communal issues.
The students and teachers experiment a modality of cooperative and democratic learning based on an exchange of competences and mutual enrichment. In this way, the competences get acquired on the news and radio communication techniques. A relation will be created in cooperation with radio stations of our territory.
The planning idea is transferable and replicable in other contexts, each of them will enrich it with new and different contents.

Description of the Case Study in National Language: