It’s the Last Part of term and the Erasmus project “NO ONE STAYS BEHIND” is about to end. Here at IIS Marchesi it is busy time for students to review what the Italian and the Cypriot team produced . And this is what Mrs La Rosa and Mrs Ferriolo did during their fourth classes (The fourth level of high school in the Educational Italian System is comparable to the ninth level in the other European countries). They organized a special activity with their students and the topic was about a particular newly born ebook. Students already know that NSB project looks for strategies to fight school drop out , and the book is part of a set of products created during the Erasmus+ project : in particular the book represents the Result 2 ( R2) , and it was made by Cypriot and Italian teams.
The lesson starts with a brainstorming activity: students and teachers share ideas about the meaning of the word “mentor” . Next step, having the group reached a common definition about the word “mentor” is to enlarge this definition to the meaning other countries involved in the project give to it. In the meanwhile teachers showed to the students the ebook “The role of the mentor” analyzing each part of it, and asking students to freely navigate through its pages.
“The role of the mentor” describes in a few words various aspects of mentorship, highlighting how many people involved in education in general, but students in particular, can benefit from the mentor’s help. There is also a page showing a list of applications useful to build surveys. During the activity, students were invited to choose one of these and develop a survey about mentorship. The application they chose is “panquiz.com” and they built an interesting survey about the topic they had studied: the titles of the survey were “ Romantic Themes” and “The rocks”.
At the end of the activity teachers asked the students to express their opinion about mentorship. Most of the group expressed appreciation: mentoring could actually help young people to deal with their fragilities and reach a mental and physical wellness. Moreover , supported by the suggestions from a person like a mentor, young people can make the right decisions about their future and career.
The book “The role of the mentor” is not to be considered as a finished result: it is actually in continuous evolution and updating. One of the aims of the book, in fact, is to act as a stimulus to any teacher or educational figure who wants to approach the world of school by getting involved with passion and competence. The same purpose is evident in each of the results created by the NSB teams, which contribute to find the best practice in the educational field. This is the reason why Erasmus plus projects like NSB can be a precious source of ideas and contents, both for teachers and for students.
