ODYSSEUS 2000

Personal Identity and social living

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Scuola Media Savoia - Jesi - Italy

WELCOME AND MEETING GROUP     

INITIATION ORIGINATED FROM FRAMEWORK

The welcome group till the first year of Odisseus 2000 project) is made up:

· To find, inside the school and among parents, the necessary resources to face the problem of a few but increasing number of immigrant students, without an elementary knowledge of Italian language. So they need an extra-linguistic help, in a precarions situation of competences, also intercultural;

· To sensitize to the rights of immigrant students to education and to the added value of their presence at school also for the cultural and instructive enrichment of the students.

TIME, DURATION, PARTECIPATION

School years 1998/99 and 1999/2000.

Twenty parents have helped teachers with linguistic support to the new immigrant students, helping them in their homework and they hawe been available to meet immigrant students’ parents to accept requests and organize intercultural meetings. External collaboration: the ARCI, the "House of Cultures" and the Association "Senza Confini".

ACTIVITIES AND METHODS

There are recurring meetings among the members of the group to speak about problems, suggest solutions, organize activities, verify the results.

POSITIVE ASPECTS

· The availability of the components of the group;

· the support done to the school integration of immigrant students and the overcoming of some difficulties.

NEGATIVE ASPECTS

· The difficulty to establish durable relationships with the families of immigrant students;

· the difficulty to maintain the doing well collaborations (the relationships stop when children finish the middle school).

POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS

It would be important to create, with the House of Cultures, a permanent welcome meeting and help centre guiding towards this structure the collaboration resources which school has brought out.