The project stems from the commitment to respond to the educative needs of the l, I.C. “Casa del Fanciullo” staff and teachers. Our school is a is a State Instituto Comprensivo comprising 800 pupils aged between 3 and 14, and 90 teaching staff in an infant school, primary school and the first year of secondary school, who want to open up to intercultural exchanges with European partners and expand the dimension of the own school according to an international perspective. In particular, given the school attendance of a notable percentage of pupils with Special Needs and with disabilities over the three levels, the school organises curricular and extracurricular activities dedicated to the education legality and, also, implements the project PON ESF 2014-2020 which is aiming at the promotion of social inclusion and the fight against poverty.

We intend to participate in a European mobility to get our staff (headmaster, his collaborators and teachers) to acknowledge new teaching methodologies and practices of inclusive management adopted in other European schools and to improve their linguistic skills which will be crucial to communicate effectively during visits to European schools. To this end, have been planned an English language training and an activity of job shadowing for the headmaster, his staff and some teachers.

We are looking for an enhancement of the English skills of the headteacher and of the project coordinator, who, in order to determine some improvement related to the school’s management for the growth of the entire school community, need to gain more fluency in English, at least a B2 level of the CEFR, so they will be able to carry out future exchanges of best practices regarding school management and leadership with European schools.
To start with this goal could be reached through to the attendance of a structured course in Ireland for five teachers of the institute, who will acquire a greater mastery of English which will allow them to be actively involved in the consecutive job shadowing activities.
Furthermore, the participants will undertake the responsibility of disseminating and instructing the entire teaching staff regarding the professional knowledge and experience learned during the mobility. Over the past years, staff and teachers have already given priority to the language training through the attendance of courses in English-speaking countries for the achievement of the B1 level, as well as they attended courses focused on the CLIL methodology. In addition, the staff is also currently attending an English language course part of the National Three-Year Plan of teachers’ training and, in line with main purposes of the school, a group of teachers has been involved in training courses
dedicated to inclusion and disability, social cohesion and youth unease.
For our educational organisation, the cooperation with other partner countries for the exchange and the discovery of good practices regarding both the teaching and learning process, the management and administrative policies of schools over Europe, responds to the will of improvement and innovation of our three-year training offer. The staff and teachers’ participation in such mobility has the following priorities and objectives:
– to acquire / improve English skills in order to enable a comparison with other realities, to access sites and resources, to plan and run projects and twinning with European partners;
– to deepen the knowledge and use of new technologies for an inclusive education through the exchange of professional experiences with Irish colleagues;
– to improve planning, monitoring and evaluation skills;
– to activate an exchange of good practices of inclusive leadership and observe management models differences between schools from several countries part of the European partnership.
The experience of cooperation between European partners represents an added value for our school that intends to look beyond the national borders in order to promoter lifelong learning and broaden personal and professional horizons and to encourage the improvement and the development of our school. Considering that our main objective is to create an inclusive leadership for an effective learning of our students who should be active protagonists of the school community, the knowledgeacquired by staff and teachers during such professional training abroad would be then disseminated in the territory and integrated in the educational practice for a positive repercussion on the development of professional skills of the whole school staff.