erasmus-marie-laurencin

Marie Laurencin Vocational High School is situated in Riom, Auvergne (France).The school project concerns twenty-five pupils from the high school. Its purpose is to provide training periods lasting four weeks in Europe for young people from the initial vocational training, such as “Baccalauréat Professionnel ”, vocational A-level and Diploma of Technician, Post-Baccalaureate. The participants, teenage boys and girls from sixteen to eighteen are in Bac Pro* Commerce (European Section), Visual Merchandising Bac Pro, Upholstery Bac Pro, Fashion Bac Pro and Diploma of Technician in the Entertainment Industry Dressing Option.

Our challenge is still the same: helping the students who are most in need and farthest from mobility to travel through Europe. Our aims are to motivate pupils so that they would carry on their studies for the Bac Pro and after in a positive manner. We aim to motivate pupils for their studies now and later, to implicate parents in that process, to favour their cultural open-mindedness, to strengthen their language and vocational skills so that they get better opportunities in their work later on. Our aim is also to develop the Mobility Team implemented in 2009.

We strongly wish the pupils to take part in every step of the project (before, during and after the training period). Before leaving they take part in games such as the Ice Breaking Game, games on mobility, the Pecha Kucha game on their cultural representations, in Forum Theater, in the organization of Tea Times and cooking foreign dishes, in creating a vocational lexicon, in completing their Europass CV and in updating our Mobility Blog. They evaluate themselves (with the help of the Ostende Tree) on their motivation and skills. During their stay, they have to account for their work activities (via emails, Skype, social networks, short messages etc). They have to evaluate their language skills, to add to their professional vocabulary and to their professional address book. Back to school, they finish their self-evaluation on their skills and motivation and write their training period report.

Our guiding line is having them be the actors of their project. It results in more motivated pupils concerning their training and their future studies, open to different cultures. They are also more at ease speaking in a foreign language, they master better the vocabulary concerning their field and gain new work skills. In doing that they get better opportunities in finding a job or a more selective higher education.

This process benefits everyone: pupils and teachers but also parents and local authorities. One of our tools is a blog on mobility which was created in October 2013 and is updated by people from our high-school. The pupils take part in this blog every step of the way with their testimonies and those of the teachers who went abroad to evaluate the training periods. This blog is widely known through social networks. It can be interesting to everyone concerned with mobility. We also advertise the results of the mobility project during the open door days in our high school. Locally, we advertise our results through two means: -participating in forums in our area -meeting local and national firms during work placement evaluations or juries for exams.

The local and regional newspapers are solicited too: for the awarding of the Europass in presence of the delegate from the DAREIC (Délégation Académique aux Relations Européennes, Internationales et à la Coopération) but also for every project concerning the European mobility. For example, we have excellent relations with the communication service of the Riom townhall. They regularly publish articles about our projects in Riom Mag in the Youth Section. The European mobility creates a momentum: even if they do not go abroad the pupils take part in some steps of the project. For instance the “CAP Employé de Commerce” pupils who have many learning difficulties, made the flyer advertising our blog.

 *Bac Pro : Baccalauréat Professionnel