On 3rd July 2017 the final conference of T2TT project was held in Sofia, Bulgaria. All partners presented their work on the project and shared their experience with more than 110 guests from Bulgaria, United Kingdom, Greece, Romania, Lithuania and Spain. The Conference was structured through 5 workshops covering the training modules created for the project:
• Workshop 1: Developing an ITE/Induction package • Workshop 2: Teaching and Learning • Workshop 3: Behaviour for Learning and Special Education Needs • Workshop 4: Measuring Pupil Progress and Impact • Workshop 5: Coaching and Mentoring and Assessment and accreditation of ITE & NQTs All the guests were divided into groups and had the chance to participate in each workshop, tasting some bits of the corresponding training module that was created by the partners in the project. It was a very successful way to end the project.
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The T2TT team in Greece presented the Erasmus+ project at the experimental school of Thessaloniki, which is managed by the Ministry of Education and is involved in testing new school policies. All six training modules developed withing the project were presented to teachers from the host school, but also from other local schools. We started with a general presentation of modules 1, 2, 3 and 4 and then continued with a more detailed presentation focusing on modules 5 and 6 which cover the topics of Coaching and Mentoring and Accreditation and Assessment. The presentations were followed by a plenary session with rich constructive conversations, exchange of different opinions and discussion on how the project outcomes can be implemented in the Greek context.
A National Conference representing the work of 5 schools in Bulgaria was held in Sofia on 10th of June. Each school had a chance to show its progress in supporting new and newly qualified teachers in their first year in the school. There were 5 different presentations each one showing the work that has been done in the school during the last school year and outlying the instruments presented to the schools during the project that helped them face the difficulties in the induction process for new and newly qualified teachers at school. 30th School “Bratya Miladinovi” presented their upgraded school structures for support for new and newly qualified teachers. In an impressive presentation all the participants that worked on the project shared valuable lessons and intriguing stories with the guests. The school team also shared its experience in supporting new teachers for organizing different extracurricular activities like School elections, a handmade transcript of a medieval book made by students and many others. 90th School “Gen. Hose De San Martin” presented a short workshop on Lesson observation – an instrument that was developed in school in order to support the spread of good pedagogical practices among all teachers in school. All the Conference guests had the chance to contribute with ideas about Lesson observation and were introduced to some of the best tips that the school team could share in order to support new and newly qualified teachers in their firs pedagogical steps at school. 2nd school “Emilian Stanev” shared their own way through the project and presented some of the lessons learned from new and newly qualified teachers during their first year in school. 144 School “Narodni Buditeli” presented some good pedagogical practices that were shared between newly qualified teachers and their Mentors during the project. The school team provoked the audience with some interesting cases that occurred with the new teachers at school during the school year and provoked a candid discussion. 32nd School “Saint Kliment Ohridski” presented a bunch of extracurricular activities that were organized by Newly qualified teachers with the support of their mentors. A Handbook with good practices for Support for new and newly qualified teachers in their first steps in school was introduced during the National Conference. This Handbook was created by the 5 schools and collects their best experience during the project. The Handbook is published only in Bulgarian and is available online here.
All the core trainings have finished for the 5 schools in Bulgaria. The last 3 days of training happened just before the beginning of the school year in Bulgaria. 26 teachers participated in the last Module of trainings that took place in the comfortable room provided by our partner – University of Finance, Business and Entrepreneurship, Sofia. All 5 partner schools sent 2 senior teachers assigned to be mentors and from 2 to 4 new teachers who will go through the induction program as part of the T2TT project. The training focused on some basic techniques for good teaching. Backwards planning, Planning purposefully orientated lessons and Creating a vision with students were some of the main topics during the first day. The second day was dedicated to different topics related to effective classroom management – a question that usually really concerns new teachers. During the last day of our mutual work all the participants discussed some good practices for evaluation of students, then moved on to the evaluation of the progress of new teachers and finished with the adaptation of the action plan for support which each school is going to follow during the upcoming school year.
The Bulgarian team is very proud with the summarized results of the feedback that we received from the teachers who participated in the sessions. The overall feedback is 9.58 out of 10 which represents the level of satisfaction of the teachers, both senior and junior. A quick update today on how Lithuania is doing with the training modules for school partners. Indrė did a great job together with one of our alumni in the program "Renkuosi mokyti!" - the principal of one of the Lithuanian schools, and they had started training for school partners. The first module meeting was held on the 14th of April - we put some photos in our Facebook page, and some of the schools' partners put them on theirs pages, so the news is spreading. The second module meeting was held on the 28th of April. Together with training module theme Indrė had invited one principal from one of the schools in the rural region to inspire the school-partners. He shared the experience of his school - how they are successfully building and implementing their professional development strategy and inspired those at the training to make their own. Partners in the Trainee to Trained Teacher (T2TT) project met in Vilnius, Lithuania on Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th March. Many of us arrived during the independence celebrations and were able to visit the amazing market in the centre of the Old Town near the impressive cathedral, dedicated to Saints Stanislaus and Ladislaus, Our venue for the meeting was the Vilnius Teachers’ House, “Vilniaus mokytojų namai” in the Old Town as guests of Teach Lithuania. We spent the first morning meeting old friends and getting acquainted with some new ones too. During this time we reviewed our progress so far and shared details of work done since the last meeting at Carmel College in Darlington. Most of the partners have identified the schools they want to work with during the next stage of the project. We quickly moved into small groups for the rest of the day to develop the programme of six modules designed to help schools support trainee and newly-qualified teachers. In the afternoon we visited a local school, the Simono Daukanto progimnazija, for a tour and time to meet the principal. At the end of the day, sadly in the pouring rain, we were taken on a guided tour of the Old Town. This informative tour helped us to understand the history of Vilnius throughout the ages. This was followed by the partners’ dinner at the Hotel Amberton. Tuesday morning saw all the partners back at the Teacher’s House and by lunch time we were able to share detailed plans of our six training modules. Partners agreed to work in pairs to support each other and will share their work with everyone by 31st March 2016. Some partners continued to work in the afternoon; some returned home. We all left feeling enthusiastic about the next steps and we are looking forward to the next project meeting in Greece in May. |