Natural Born Teachers participants have finally met for the first in-presence activity of this project, in which JUMP Association is the leading organization, with two partners schools with the same needs and objectives, Agrupamento de Escolas Elias Garcia from Sobreda, Portugal, and Tallinn Männi kindergarten from Tallin, Estonia, as well as the associated partner, the Italian school IC Mario Squillace Montepaone.
The first Learning Teaching Training mobility (LTT) was held from 22 to 27 October 2023, hosted in Sobreda by the portuguese partner school.
The focus was “Nature based education and Eco-schooling, with the experimentation and added value of the contamination of Mindfulness activities”.
6 teachers from each country have enjoyed this intense and enriching experience, in which the synergic mix of indoor and outdoor activities created a perfect learning environment to exchange experiences, learning from each other, the local context and from local experts.
The hosting school team, Agrupamento de Escolas Elias Garcia, shared with enthusiasm their experience in Nature-based education, Eco-schooling, Art and Creativity, and many other activities dedicated to the promotion of wellnes and awareness, like yoga for kids and meditation.
One of the most interesting moments was an arts activity immersed in Casa da Cerca and its botanical garden, where participants experimented creativity and the ability to stay focused, centered, present, relaxed and connected at the same time.The following is a feedback from some of the participating teachers at the end of the day
“…Today was a very artistic and interesting day!
We visited Casa da Cerca, where we had a fantastic teacher Mario who guided us through the wonderful path of art, nature, smells, perspective and showed us the way anybody could be a artist and reminded us that everybody can draw!
Looking at a panoramic view of Lisbon, being present with each other, learned about new drawing techniques and did different fun exercises of staying focused in ourselves and eachother!”
Besides this, once back home, in order to develop awareness about the learning process, every participant was invited to write and share a small text that reflects their personal reflections and points of view about the learning experience during this LTT.
After the LTT, the learning path of our project continues in Blended modality and is supported through a series of 6 Follow up meetings. At the moment 2 out of these 6 meetings have already been held, and they were enriching opportunities to meet again with the whole group, stay in contact, share local updates and go deeper into the topics of our learning path with trainers and experts, who led activities that included the practice of meditation and mindfulness.
Accompanying the group in this process of education to wellbeing is one of the main objectives of our project, and together we learn better!
See you all in 2024 for our next online follow up meeting on 24th january.
Written by Alessia Simonetti, JUMP Team