Our partnership project stems from a need and the eagerness to arouse in our students both a higher level of commitment and motivation to learn and to provide teachers with new and more specific educational tools for their everyday work. Our target is that this increase in students’ motivation and teachers’ training could be a major channel to help reduce early school-leaving and school failure within those students who seem to be less engaged because of their social status or cultural difference (foreign students).But other than all these targets, we also aim at spreading in our schools the knowledge of foreign languages, a more international attitude, the developing of some key competences, the use of new technologies as well as to deepen the cultural and artistic heritage of the cities we live in. To reach our goal we have considered our cities as real “bases of operations” to start from. They are our students’ everyday world and therefore it is here that they feel more at ease. The three cities involved in the project are all coastal cities, which will be the focus of our activities. These activities will be carried out by 15 to 18-year-old students from all the three schools (roughly 300 kids). Some of them will be chosen for the exchange programme: those who are financially disadvantaged or with learning disabilities, as well as the ones who will show a particular commitment in the project and prove especially helpful.The project activities will focus on two targets: the students and the teachers. Those linked to the students will be part of the syllabuses of the different school subjects and are,- an economic research on the impact of the port in our cities;- a past and present photo tour of our maritime towns and an exhibition preparation to be displayed in the three cities involved.- a setting up of a “ startup” with students related to the business sector of tourism.- literary and theatrical activities related to our coastal townsAs to the teachers we have scheduled three training opportunities during the first two years of the project development, with a special focus on:- planning, implementation and evaluation of different learning settings;- development and evaluation of key transversal competences;- educational benefits of new technologies for the teachers, with special reference to school inclusion of disadvantaged students.We aim at implementing these activities by means of new teaching strategies which promote: cooperative information research and a relevant acquisition of a shared knowledge, use of foreign languages as a means of communication ,the use of ICT as a tool to learn. The main target of the project, i.e. communication among the students and their inclusion, will certainly be the very centre of the project itself.We believe that this kind of educational approach is more engaging that a lecture-based class and can therefore lead to an improvement in the students’ performance, in their language skills and as a consequence to a decrease in early school-leaving and school failure. At the same time this will ensure the students a deeper knowledge of the cultural heritage of our cities.Besides, we hope that over the long term the participating schools will keep on using a student centred educational approach based on authentic learning, encouraging students to create tangible, useful products to be shared with their world, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by our coastal cities. Finally we hope our project will encourage teachers to foster lifelong learning which further deepens their competences, skills, and knowledge.

Early school leaving is a real social issue. The unemployment rate among early school leavers is higher than 40%. Dale’s studies confirm that a student learns better when he acts: he retains 20% of what he hears, 50% of what he sees and hears, and 90% of what he does. Non-formal education, active education, make teaching more attractive, more “snappy”. Students change over the years, the same is true regarding their ability to pay attention and to be focused, but teaching methods often struggle to evolve to cope with it. While recent years have seen significant progress in tackling early school leaving, efforts need to be sustained and the focus must be put on prevention.This is the objective that DROP'IN gave itself by allowing the cross between the formal education and the non-formal education environment to keep students and teachers to be into in the educational environment.It is the question of keeping the students motivated that is worked here, in response to the fight against school dropout. DROP'IN is a long-term investment and is therefore a project that worked closely with teachers during 36 months to give them knowledge and skills in the non-formal education sector, to enable them to become trainers for their peers so that the dynamics continue beyond the project. The achievements of this 36-month project were: teacher training on techniques and attitudes / method of non-formal education, research and state of the art in the partner regions, test period and implementation through teacher-expert pairs of non-formal methods for students from 12 to 18, capitalization, dissemination and multiplication of good practices developed for opening up to other schools.The project developed a state of the art, a catalogue of techniques, a training in non-formal methods - a veritable vademecum for teachers - an analysis of the practices tested and their valorisation in the form of an online portfolio as well as a policy paper indicating the specific axes to develop to contribute to this fight against early school leaving. The partners gathered around the project combined expertise from the non-formal education sector with secondary schools as well as a University from 5 European countries impacted by the issues of school dropout (Latvia, Belgium, Italy, Bulgaria and La France). Transversality is a key word of the DROP'IN project: the partners are diverse and complementary in the consortium (associations, municipalities, schools and University) and in each country, a local steering committee was created and developed the adaptation of DROP'IN in the local context, involving all the stakeholders of the wider educational community (teachers, parents, institutions ...). In doing so, these steering committees facilitated the ownership of the project by a broad network of associated partners and the dissemination of results on a large scale.

Our partnership combines the efforts of 8 organisations (6 schools and 2 training providers) from five European countries (PT, BG, IT, BE, RO) in an attempt to create a unique and innovative educational tool to support teachers in their daily work and students (6-10 ;10- 14;14-16;16-19 y.o.) to be engaged in their achievements, development and success.The idea of 12 HABITS FOR SUCCESS project has emerged from challenges schools and teachers in our partnership face in empowering their educational materials and approaches for habits and engaging their students for delivering habits building and personal growth, that is, to succeed as lifelong learners and as citizens in a changing society.The overall goal of the 12 HABITS FOR SUCCESS is to enhance capacities of teachers to improve student’s motivation, habits needs and gain a better understanding of their strengths and for both actors the continuation of their personal and professional development either in education or in personal life.The project activities will be grouped in work (WP) processes which can be summarized as follows:1-WP1-Management- Main activities: strategic documents adoption, 4 partner meetings, task allocations, reporting, monitoring, quality assurance, risk management, communication with National Agency and internal evaluation. 2-WP2-Development of the 12 HABITS FOR SUCCESS Methodology guide book and students activity book which will foster wide cross-sectorial partnerships on developing further innovations to support teaching and training practices. These resources will ensure motivation, coaching and support habits building and will be a source of open educational resource which will lead the non-experienced educators through the habits building and personal growth for their students so they can overcome the barriers faced while gaining new knowledge, experience and skills. It will be translated in all partners languages, plus English; Piloting in classroom, evaluation reports,fine tuning.3-WP3-Evaluation process-Teacher’s review and feedback during this LTTA training sessions ,evaluation reports and fine tuning.4-WP4-Dissemination-Main activities to be delivered: project online platform, a production and distribution of news items, delivering presentations to national and European events, direct meetings with stakeholders, promotion meetings with teachers at partners schools.5-WP5-Multiplier event-presentation of the project results to EU organisations and structure.The 12 HABITS FOR SUCCESS was designed having in mind three outputs:Output1:-12 HABITS FOR SUCCESS Methodology-guide for teachers and trainers. This output will make an overview of the current methodologies in the partner's countries used by educators and trainers in 6 languages (EN,PT, BG, IT, FR, RO).Output2 -Integrated Students Activity Book with basic instruments, brief explanations of the habits;glossary of terms; training sessions of different activities;“a bag of tricks” and useful pieces of advice and suggestions for the students 6 languages (EN,PT, BG, IT, FR, RO).Output3 -ONLINE PLATFORM-12 HABITS FOR SUCCESS:Besides being informative the online platform-12 HABITS Methodology guide (IO1) and the Integrated Students activity book (IO2) will have also a paper version in English, Portuguese, Italian, French, Romanian and Bulgarian. This book will have practical activities, based mainly on experiential learning methods to use as tools of working with students. The mindset and the personal skills, show them how to cooperate and work in teams, gain self-confidence, express emotions and access their creative resources.80 teachers (20 per country) participating in the intellectual outputs120 students (20 per country) engaged in the Students activity book30 teachers (5 per partner) Teachers training LLTP150 Teachers, 3000 students, 35 stakeholders reached through dissemination activitiesThe main qualitative outcomes and impact we expect to achieve are related to:-improved increase in educational success and teaching competences-improved capacities of teachers to evaluate skills from initial and ongoing training and enhance reflection on the practice-improved motivation for learning, engagement and habits in our students within project lifetime-improved the quality of education at local level, which will also lead to better educated students-improved international cooperation competences of partner organisation’s teachers and staff-improved quality of research and innovation design capacities of schools and non-school partnersOur main hope for 12 HABITS FOR SUCCESS PROJECT is related to the vision of helping teachers in our countries and across Europe in providing their students with suitable conditions to achieve sustainable learning outcomes, which will lead to their successful transition to upper levels and in long terms perspective to better personal and professional development

Our school stands amid blocks of flats in a culturally diverse part of town. We have coped with issues of migrant students for a number of years. We have developed several methods for their successful integration. Wishing to take a step further, we decided to bring our challenge to an international level. Four other foreign schools with similar issues and students were invited to participate in our project.The project aimed to: promote tolerance, mutual acceptance and integration of migrant and other students by discovering cultural diversity at school, local and genral public levels; discover different cultures of students through various methods and activities in different areas (music, dancing, cuisine); encourage active involvement in project and school activities;improve students and teachers’ IKT skills and use; provide students with opportunity and encouragement to express their cultural identity; teach students how to live in harmony and help them develop positive attitude towards other cultures;make students understand that learning about other cultures broadens their knowledge and horizon, especially in Europe, which is a mixture of cultures; make students aware of changes in society (migrants, refugees…) and help them develop a positive attitude towards them; enable exchange of good practices on international level;include students, parents, teachers, other school workers and local community in international cooperation; promote the project on local, regional and international level.Primarily it was students, parents, teachers and other school workers who participated in the project. Local community was actively involved, while various societies took part in project activities. Many other schools got included by taking part in two international fine arts contests in two countries thus expanding the project internationally.Partner schools organized many activities to reach project goals. Certain traditional school events were adjusted to meet project requirements, others were added. Schools sent each other New Year's greeting cards with cultural characteristics of individual countries, made by students. All schools placed cards on display. Each school also organized an event, where dances of students from different cultural backgrounds of each school were presented. Students learnt and performed one traditional dance from a partner school. Migrant students' parents helped with presentation of their dances and culture. Schools used project activities to participate in events of regional cultural societies. Fine arts contest was dedicated to our project and depiction of diverse cultures. At the end of school year, each school worked together with local community to organize an event, where we presented project results, distributed project material and carried out project activities for general public. Students, parents, school workers, local societies, local community members and community representatives were all invited to these events. The second year schools exchanged video greetings in December with students showing Christmas and New Year’s traditions of their cultures. We also prepared an exchange of traditional fairy tales from partner countries, which we did in pairs. Each partner country wrote a script of its traditional fairy tale and sent it to a partner school. Next, students of both schools performed each other’s fairy tale and shot a video of it. Finally, a cultural day was held at schools, on which students could see both fairy tales. The second project year, Turkey set up an exhibition called Child and Peace. Students created works inspired by multiculturalism and peace.Short and long-term results and effects: migrant students feel better and more included; they have become more successful, school atmosphere has improved, whereas parents and local community have strengthened their ties with the school. Our school successfully cooperated with partner schools and learnt examples of their good practices. Some teachers have overcome their fear of international cooperation. New teams for international projects were formed. Students have learnt about different cultures, have become more aware of them and have developed a positive attitude towards them. Tolerance for marginalized social groups, including migrants and refugees, has increased. We gained new knowledge and experience in an active way. Because of cooperation between schools students could make new international contacts. Students and teachers also became more skilled in IKT and have been using them more often. Different project material was prepared for the purpose of project dissemination. The final product is a collection of material presented in an e-book, dictionary and a short film. We have become aware of fear that foreign cultures may cause, but have also proved that by learning about them, this fear is unnecessary and redundant. This is the message we disseminated on school, local, regional and international level.

<< Objectives >>The main goal of the project is to create and make available to teachers accessible, easily –implemented and attractive STEM educational resources to raise students’ (6-14 y.o.) interest over STEM and improve their Science Literacy. This will be achieved by empowering teachers with appealing approaches to STEM education through learning by doing and elaboration of Toolkit with guidelines for developing STEM lessons (WP1) and elaboration of online Wiki developed by their colleagues (WP2).<< Implementation >>The partnership will implement management and implementation activities connected to the general management of the project, sharing and promotion activities for dissemination of results, activities for sustainability of the results and their future availability and implementation as well as training activities for teachers. The main activities will be connected to the developing of tangible and non-tangible results- Toolkit for developing STEM lessons and the Online wiki.<< Results >>Тhe partnership will elaborate a Toolkit with guidelines for developing STEM lessons, will train teachers and trainers how to use the Toolkit and the guidelines in international and national trainings and will create online Wiki with STEM lessons and materials freely accessible for everyone interested in the STEM topics. Besides the tangible results the partnership will also deliver sharing and promotional events and will train teachers in developing STEM lessons.