Lis Diary Blog

1. "Lis diary" project's general characteristics

State comprehensive institute of San Marcello Pistoiese was the promoter and partner of the project "Lis diary" Comenius 2011/2013.

The project -with a duration of three years - involved seven secondary schools of secondary degrees of the following countries:

Greece, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Turkey.

"Lis Diary" has recently finished with a workshop in Vila Praia de Ancora (Portugal) on 3-10 may 2013 on 9th may, official closing of the meeting on concomitance with the Europe Day through a sumptuous cerimony that was developed in the town square with the presence of municipal autorithies, with all the students of "Ancorensis" cooperative school pupils let alone of students and with the teachers from different nations who participated in the project.

2. Organization of activities

"Lis Diary" planned, for every school year, three stays of a week in one of the associated school institutions.

The host countries, in chronological order, were:

Turkey - Turgutlu (September 2011)

Ireland - Dublin (February 2012)

Greece - Plomari, Lesbo (May 2012)

Romania - Zimnicea (October 2012)

Italy - San Marcello Pistoiese, Pistoia (February 2013)

Portugal - Vila Praia de Ancora (May 2013)

Every stay plannede a part of an eminently explorative aspect, centred on the territory and its geographic, historical and climatic peculiarities discovery, with a particular attention to folklore and food and wine aspects, too. These elements of "pragmatic" knowledge of taste and traditions of the places worth a visit, bought a particular value exactly because autochthonous people were the guides for the guests to explore their own territory, enabling by this way to the strangers not a tourist approach, but a real cultural discovery and rediscovery.

To the aspects of the immersion in the territory - through the privileged guide of inhabitants of the place and in a sensory discovery process that involves the observer tout court - were put beside activities with a typically seminar character. For the single workshops the work groups of the different countries took part in the project and shared opinions with each other with rigor and precision about the works of "Lis Diary", among which Infra.

3. Organization of the cores of work

The Comenius project provides such basic requirements, solidarity and cooperation between students and ability of the individual working groups. As part of the annual stays, they are in fact united both in the size of learning both in comparison with possible difficulties (interaction in foreign language; immersing in the cultural realities profoundly distant from their own).
Not to be underestimated is the importance of sharing, with its European partners, the dynamics of the design and drafting of projects: a fruitful exchange that often involves the need to expand or at least changes their point of view, often closely linked to stereotypes of national character.
In this sense, the stay of ten days at Zimnicea, Romania, has helped to overcome some of the Italian students clichés that are generally associated with the men from Eastern Europe. The meeting then – after an initial reluctance of Italian parents, reluctant to be far from their children - is actually a revealed valuable experience of interculturality.
The team of the Italian teachers includes three members: Prof. Angelo Boffa, Prof. Elisa Lucchesi and Prof. David Petrucci and is coordinated by the Headmaster, Ing Maria Lucia Querques.
The students’ team is composed of a student coordinator, Giovanni Albergucci, and a variable number of students between three and twelve units. The students are normally selected into equal parts between the three different courses of study that the Institute Omnicomprensivo State includes in the Upper Secondary: Institute for Administration, Finance and Marketing (AFM), Institute for Mechanics and Tecnology (ITI) and Scientific Lyceum.
As part of the planned annual stays, the team teachers usually spend the night in hotels, while the students are accommodated in the host families of the students of the partner school.
The stays usually provide, in the discovery of the territory, different activities for students and teachers and moments of collective sharing. Then the students usually attend the ordinary curricular educational activities together with colleagues who host them.
The workshops are also characterized by moments of distinct processing and sharing moments between teachers and learners: the constant use of the English language obviously favours the improvement of active skills, both written and spoken.

4. The theme of the project: "Life Story Diary"

The theme of the project "Life Story Diary" focuses on the daily lives of European students: what is really important to them, how they see the world and interpret the world around them.
In this way, it will promote the effective exchange of experiences between young Europeans.

The project logo was created by the Italian team coordinated in the graphics processing by Prof. Paolo Vitali.

Technically it is based on a blog platform Weebly divided into three different sections:
My country / News, My world / News, My feelings / My thoughts.
The students were invited to express freely in thoughts and emotions, but also to share teaching experiences and literary trails carried out in the ordinary school activity.
In each encounter, of an international character, students and teachers have then identified the post to be included in the diary to be published in hard copy, at the end of the project.
We hope, in this way, to promote European integration and also to be able to share what it means to feel young lato sensu in Europe nowadays.
Detailed information is available on the project website "Lis Diary":
http://lisdiary.weebly.com/

5. The thematic of the Italian team: Lis and the 'mad' flight

Each partner country was invited to draw up, in the final phase of the "Lis Diary" Comenius, a theme about the journey that pointed out, worked out the main points for reflection within the planning.
The students of Scientific Lyceum "E. Fermi "San Marcello Pistoiese, coordinated by me, proceeded to draw up an itinerary of literature dedicated to the theme of travel and focused, specifically, on the figure of Ulysses, traveller for excellence.
The title of the course, Lis and the 'mad flight', clearly refers to the famous phrase of Dante's Inferno XXVI.
The route is imagined as a metaphorical journey Lis - prototype of a European citizen without a face and a well-defined nationality - in the great sea of literature.
Each post-thirteen total - was produced by small groups of two / three students belonging to different classes and is organized as a narrative continuum that investigates the figure of Odysseus from Homer's Odyssey to the 'mad flight' of Dante.
The last two posts, written by students of IV Scientific Lyceum and therefore of more complex articulation as to the content, analyse finally some topical issues, such as the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI and the Italian political situation on the eve of the last elections.

Hello,
in the next week we'll have a Science Fair and a Book Fair. We also will have a "Food Bank Against Hunger" to help every family in need all around town. A lot of students will be in all of the supermarkets and mini-markets in town, and ask people to buy something to the bank, so we can help the families and students in our school that need it. It also collects and distribute ten thousands of tons of products and support along the year more than 1400 institutions in Portugal. At least 216000 people receive the products that the food bank gives them.
It's really important to help people around us! We can't let people, especially students from our school starve! Our help will make a big difference.

Curiosity:
The first "Food Bank Against Hunger" was open in the United States, Phoenix(Arizona) in 1966. This idea was brought to Europe in 1984, and to Portugal in 1992 with opening in Lisboa. After that, many others food banks were opened in Portugal.

Love, Joana S (a little of Catarina L.) xoxo