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Peers in Europe
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Four schools from three countries collaborate in the „Peers in Europe” strategic partnership. The Dutch CSG Prins Maurits and the Hungarian Szentendrei Református Gimnázium have been working in various projects for a long time and experienced the benefits of learning from each other and become more aware of their own strength and weaknesses. The two schools in Romania have been twin and contact schools of Szentendrei Református Gimnázium and have little or no experience of international cooperation. As both Liceul Teologic Reformat Tg. Secuiesc and Scoala Gimnaziala Kriza Janos/ Şcoala Generala Benkő József are schools where students are of the ethnic Hungarian minority, the staff feel the special need to help them in as many ways as possible to keep their ethnic identity and become successful citizens of their country. The idea of implementing new student-centred methods and work together came up when discussing results of PISA and national tests of students’ competences finding that there are significant differences in results of nations. Working in international cooperation and being able to gain insight to the work of schools operating in a completely different background from your own seemed an effective way of professional development. Learner autonomy, creativity and interaction among two generations of students and with local communities have been chosen as the focus of the four-party partnership. Innovative learning tools of the following methods are going to be used such as peer-teaching, non-formal learning and simple business research. ICT and the English language are planned to be applied as means of communication and tools to complete tasks in international groups. Joint staff trainings will help teachers become more confident to apply these tools. Partners will share their experience of how to manage international partnerships in terms of communication, tasks, time and budget. A document containing learning tools tested in the partnership will be compiled and published. Within the two years of the partnership three well-prepared exchanges of groups of students will be done, one to each country. During these exchange visits students will do some community service, carry out a simple business research discovering local opportunities of tourism or agro-tourism, film indigenous plants and local people showing how to make a typical local product and translate it into English, interview local a local artist, in other words discover the uniqueness of the location working with peers from the other two countries. The versatile eTwinning site will be used to start collaboration among students and teachers. The partnership will create a website accessible to people with disabilities or with special needs to show the result of their work. Closer professional and personal ties among the partners can be one major result of this partnership. Students taking more responsibility for their own learning process, teachers motivated to use more student-centred methods and the improvement of the participants' language skills will be some additional results. Local communities will see the activity of these schools can be directly beneficial to the community in new ways. Establishing new international partnerships using the experience gained in "Peers in Europe" project will definitely contribute to the future development of schools taking part.
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