One of the final tasks of the project was for each school to make a movie and a presentation about their mentoring program. What were the challenges, what was the outcome? What students say? If you are interested in finding out how the process looked for each partnering school, read (and watch) more.
(NOTE: all of the attached videos are also listed as the project’s results)
Implementation of the mentoring program looked differently in each school. Private school Futura from Croatia had many challenges during school year 2019/2020 which resulted in conducting the programme just in 2020/2021. Schools from Lido di Camaiore (Italy) and Vratza (Bulgary) found their way regarding global epidemics, lockdowns and other obstacles. ProCivitas Växjö already had long tradition of working with mentoring programme which made their challenges a bit smaller and their program continued to flourish.
Each school had to make a film on the topic “Our Mentoring Programme”. Mostly, these movies sum up experiences of the teachers and students in implementing the programme. If you want to learn more how it looked like and what they’ve said, watch the videos below.
Last students exchange of Erasmus+ project “Mentoring Programme” was held from November 23rd to November 27th 2020. It was supposed to take place in Vratsa, Bulgaria, but unfortunately, we were not able to visit it because of our current invisible enemy, COVID-19. Regardless, exchange was still conducted virtually via video calls and video workshops.
Each partnering school – from Bulgaria, Italy and Sweden – participated with their groups of pupils who met each other on the first day, Monday, November 23rd, in a video call during which everyone had to introduce and say few words about themselves. Also, on Monday, hosts presented video about their school, „Nikola Yonkov Vaptsarov“, which seems very interesting because of its variety of educational programs and projects. The same day we watched each school’s movie about their way of implementing mentoring program and experiences they’ve gained so far. The next “lesson” was about Bulgarian history which has some similarities to Croatian one, so it was interesting to compare them. For the last activity of the day, we watched video about city of Vratsa and its beauties. Vratsa is located on the foot of the mountain Vrachanski Balkan, which reminds me of Zagreb and its mountain, Medvednica. I liked the video a lot, as well as the city, and it would be really lovely if we had a chance to visit it.
How school from Lido di Camaiore implemented mentoring programme and what were their experiences
Next day, Tuesday, started with ice-breaking activity called Speed dating. The goal of that activity was for the participants to get to know each other better, to share some information about our countries, but also ourselves, our hobbies, life events… I liked this activity probably the most because I enjoyed talking with people from other countries and meeting them. After speed dating, we watched 4 short movies on motivation and life wisdom which were very interesting and insightful. After that, there was recorded video interview with one of the Bulgarian mentors and from this video we learned how Bulgarian mentoring program works, what could be benefits of mentoring program, who is fit to be a mentor etc. This encouraged me to maybe ask for a mentor in my final year so s/he can teach me things that are not in school curricula, but interest me a lot. After that we had team work via video call regarding what are important things of mentoring programme and these conclusions were presented afterwards. For me, this virtual group work was the best part of the exchange.
Wednesday supposed to start with an activity in organization of Italian team which was based on teaching each other nation-specific gestures and on creating shapes with our bodies for a group picture. Due to some complications, this activity was rescheduled for afternoon, so the day started with workshop for non-programmers on how to make website using WordPress which was conducted by one of the Bulgarian mentors, mr. Kadiiski. It was very useful workshop, probably the most practical and useful one, though it was a bit complicated for me (probably because of technical issues during the lecture). Wednesday’s afternoon was filled with previously mentioned Italian non-verbal activity and bunch of videos from Bulgarian mentors – we heard Mr. Kadiiski, Mr. Georgiev and miss from Chamber of commerce and industry. Each one of them shared their view on mentoring programme, why is it important and what are the qualities of good mentor, mentee and fulfilling mentoring relationship.
Thursday’s program was opened with a Kahoot quiz, which simply can’t be boring. Participants had to guess worldwide popular music hits based solely on screenshots from their music videos. After the quiz, students were writing their parts of the text that will be included in the Mentoring Manual. Ater that we had one more activity based on learning more about Bulgarian history, culture, society and nature which was followed by students comparing cultures of their countries with what was learned about our host’s country. We learned quite a lot about Bulgaria while watching and reading all of these materials and it is a shame we couldn’t visit it but, at least, this way we felt a bit of its spirit, even on a distance.
Friday, November 27th, was last day of the exchange and it started with interesting, diverse and funny Kahoot quiz prepared by Swedish team. When we finished, we continued with one of the most entertaining activities that took place during this virtual exchange. Each student, connected with his/her group in a video call, had to tell one truth and two lies about him/herself while rest of the group had to guess which of the statement was the true one. There was so many different examples and we laughed a lot. After that activity, we had a revision of the whole week and greeted each other because it was the last lecture of the exchange – but also, of the project. Afterwards, we watched short movie about Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, got our certificates and ended with our five-days-long learning and hanging out.
It was very interesting and fun experience, which would be even better if we went to Bulgaria, but this wasn’t disappointing alternative in any possible way. I would recommend anyone to participate in Erasmus+ project, as well as in their school Mentoring programs, because it can be entertaining, but also valuable and useful further in your life.
Mentoring Project 