Colegiul National “Vasile Alecsandri”, Bacau
Our national college includes a number of 1200 students and offers lower-secondary (5th-8th grade) and upper-secondary (9th to 12th grade) education. The ages of our students range from 10 to 18. There are 92 members of the staff – 66 teachers and 26 non-teaching staff.
The highschool students follow a variety of profiles that the school offers – philology, social sciences, science, mathematics-Computer science. We have 8 classes per level, a total of 32 classes. Our students come from a mix of backgrounds – mainstream, with average financial status, students commuting from poorer areas around our city, students with special needs – learning difficulties (8%), students with parents working abroad and raised by their relatives (30%), Roma students (2%), children raised by single parents etc.
Starting with 2014, we have been partners in or coordinated Erasmus+ projects – KA201 „Career Planning for Teenagers” (2014-16), KA102 „Comptente noi – Valoare adaugata” (2014-15), KA219 „Moving Minds through Movies” (2016-18) for which we were given the „Good practices” award and we are currently coordinating KA229 „Mobile tools, dynamic games and collaborative tasks to increase engagement in EFL classes” (2019-21). We have noticed throughout the years that Erasmus+ projects bring a plus of motivation to students and teachers and we want to involve as many teachers and students as possible, so that we attain a higher impact of the European experiences. As well as this, through this specific project, we are interested in developing students’ sense of responsibility towards the environment. Although efforts are made to educate them in the spirit of eco-friendly behaviour, we are still struggling to change deeply-rooted mentalities that stem from a long-ranging disregard for the protection of the environment. Some of the activities we have performed so far in the attempt to raise awareness and change behaviours are: Earth Day campaign, Clean-up campaigns of natural landscapes, Earth Hour etc. We strongly believe that a joint European effort will have a greater impact on the students, as they will be able to focus entirely on such topics, observe examples of correct behaviour and also they will be motivated by the fact that they will make new friends among their European peers.
For the purpose of the project, we have initiated a local partnership with the Regional Ecology Centre (CRE Bacău), an NGO active in the field. They will assist us in implementing and organising the project activities and will play an active role throughout the project.
The key persons involved in the project implementation: Mariana Andone (contact person, coordinator of EU projects), Adriana Macinca (principal, geography teacher and president of CRE Bacău, who will be coordinating the topic-related actions), Ramona Covaci (EFL teacher with evaluation duties), Ramona Mocanu and Ramona Jitaru (dissemination duties). The team will also include the viceprincipal and a number of Geography, Science and EFL teachers.
Website: http://cnva.ro/