A Comenius experience

Ever since Teresa Nuzzo Primary School at Marsa embarked on the Comenius Project, funded by the European Union, quite a few of the teachers have had the chance to witness how schools abroad are run. This has proved to be quite an enriching experience for teachers and students alike.

Teresa Nuzzo School is a Church school run by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart. At the beginning of this scholastic year, I was invited to accompany the headmistress, Sr Rita Vella, to Sweden, where we met our partner school teachers from Sweden, Holland and Italy.

We received a warm welcome and we felt at home during the entire four days we stayed there. We were shown round the schools by a group of children themselves. We could see how lessons are conducted and observed the children's behaviour both during lessons and in the playground.

It was a pleasure to see how the children tried to explain everything to us in English, which is a foreign language for them. Their craft lessons include both woodwork and needlecraft.

We watched them trying out their hands at sawing and sewing with real sewing machines. They were all creating things like trolls, wooden spatulas and soft toys. They really looked proud of their work.

A lot of emphasis is placed on reading. In fact one class is trying to read a thousand books during this scholastic year. Their teacher said they would be getting a special treat when they read them all. I'm sure they'll do so because up to now they have already read around 300.

These Swedish children are eager to go on communicating through e-mail with Maltese children. In fact up to now there were two classes of 25 children each who have been sending e-mails to our students, but for this year there are three more classes wishing to communicate.

That would mean that 125 children in all would be communicating with our students. What an experience that is for our children to be able to learn about other people's culture and customs. Besides learning, there is other added value: promoting understanding, friendship and tolerance among the different peoples of the world.

During our four-day stay in Stockholm we as co-ordinators of this Comenius Project, proposed new ideas and plans for this scholastic year. These ideas were readily accepted and acclaimed.

This year we plan to hold a video-conference between the schools and the children would hopefully be able to communicate via v-mail. They will be telling each other about the sports, sportsmen and safety at sports with special reference to what happens in these three countries.

Over the weekend we were taken on a city sightseeing tour in which we saw the most important sights in Stockholm. We were shown around the city hall, the parliament house, the Vasa Museum and we also went around the old town. These excursions proved to be highly interesting.

These visits and the teachers' exchanges that take place provide useful information and are in themselves an enriching experience to students and teachers alike.

Mrs Guillaumier is the co-ordinator of the Comenius Project at Teresa Nuzzo Primary School.