First meeting of the Comenius group

Yesterday afternoon I had the first meeting of the group. Not what you would call a tremendous success as most of them didn't come!

Four of them excused their absence beforehand but quite a lot simply didn't come because they had other things to do. I will have to make clear to them that this really isn't an optional thing and that they will have to attend. As it is I have made up an attendance sheet so that they will have to sign every time we have a meeting.

The meeting itself with the people who attended wasn't too bad, I did most of it in English but some of them, Ferran and Mayte, got lost immediately and I had to repeat a lot of it in Catalan. We did get the basics done, I have told them all to create a gmail account and I handed out the questionnaire and explained how to fill it in.

The fun part was when Mayte wanted to create a mail address called maytetas@gmail.com, I had to explain to her that this is not the sort of image we really wanted to present to the rest of the participants. She was unfazed but happily settled for mayteroq in the end. Mariona insisted we took a photo of the three of us on the first day and so we have been immortalised thus;












Who can guess which is Mayte? No prizes I am afraid. Mariona saw this photo and felt that she was being outshone by Mayte so we took another.












Today I have been doing documents for the students, I get the feeling that I have to make this appear official to them as soon as possible so they develop a work ethic for the project. Mayte and Mariona were just a little to "happy" yesterday and of course many of them just didn't come. I will allow a couple of weeks before really coming down on them hard in any way but in the meantime I want them to have to sign forms, fill in things and have to read the noticeboard so that they get a feeling of the official nature of what we are doing.

As for other things, the contracts have been sent off to Madrid, I hope, with a covering letter so that is done, now we just wait. I have commented briefly with Mª Jose about an official opening for the project and she said we could even get the Mayor of Roquetes to come. That would be good as if he comes it means photos and appearing in the press. I asked for "permission" to start working on publicity and she said I can do what I want. As a result I have to phone the local radio station as I want to appear on it to talk about the project, maybe take a couple of students too, and I will have to contact the local papers too.

I have talked with one of my colleagues, Batiste, about a webpage. He and I are in the middle of redesigning the school's webpage and he says that it wouldn't be too difficult to make up a webpage for the project if that is what I have to have. I am quite happy with the blog but if everyone has a page and Dominika asks for that then I will have to do something about it I suppose. We are trying to find a moment to meet and do something about it.

Mª Jose

Today I have spoken to Mª Jose about the contract and everything and there is no problem at all there. I want to phone Nuria Estrada to confirm some things, things that I think I am clear on but I want cleared, but this apart I will fill in the details of the bank account and get Francesc to sign them asap.

Completing the contract

Today I have seen and talked to Tere about the contract and what we are going to do with the money. The school apparently only has one bank account, why does that surprise me? And everything that the school receives has to go through it. So I have taken the details and I will use them to fill in the forms. They then have to be sent off to Madrid, once Francesc has signed them, and then we should receive one copy back and THE MONEY.

One immediate hiccup is that even if we had to money now we need to book the flights with a credit card and the school doesn't have one. Tere said that she is always asking for one but that the bank refuses to give the school one because two people have to sign on all school cheques and transactions. This seems strange as as she says a company is in the same situation and yet has no problem with issuing its people with credit cards. So anyway when I want to book the flights I will have to do so with my own card!

With regard to the flights I think I will book multiple flights through Ryan air, we will have to go to Stansted and then to Katowice through Stansted. This is no problem on the way out but on the way back we will have to leave a day later, on the 22nd, and spend the night in the UK as there is no continuing flight back to Reus. So this will add two days to the original seven and we will be back on the 23rd. I will have to look to see if this is just silly, I am not sure at the moment. After all if we have to come back on the 23rd we might as well stay in Poland and come back on Wizzair on their Sunday flight, the only problem is that it goes to Girona!

A little more study is called for and then I will have to book them, this week if I can.

We receive official notification

Now it's official, today Francesc told me to look at my mail whilst passing in the corridor and Mª Jose said there was something about the Comenius and lo and behold... the contract has arrived.

This was last thing this afternoon and really I haven't had time to do much more than print out a copy and glance over it. From the little I have seen it is an official contract in which all our obligations are set out and that basically what it adds up to is that we get 80% of the money now but God help us if we can't justify how we spend it as then the school will end up paying for everything.

I will read it further this evening and talk to Mª Jose and Tere Sabate (the school secretary and sort of treasurer) tomorrow.

Oooops, small problem

These things are sent to try us I suppose. Out of interest I checked the price of tickets just now on wizzair and it seems that there aren't flights on the 14th and 21st, the nearest I can get are two days before or after these dates.

I am not sure how to solve this as with other airlines I am going to be charged the earth!! We will see, perhaps we will have to go wednesday to wednesday and miss that last two days with everyone else, after all, needs must when the devil drives.

It's official!

Dominika has sent a mail to everyone today making the dates for the visit in Poland officially the 14th to the 21st. This means that if, IF, I had access to the money I could reserve the tickets already.

She has also confirmed that she wants us all to book into the Villa Eureka, this apparently is in the centre of her city and only two minutes away from her school on foot.










She will make the bookings necessary here and let us know when it is done.

So now I just wait, though I think if I don't hear anything by Thursday I will ask the school if they will advance me the money... though whether they will or not I have no idea.

First notification to the students

Today has been the first day of school for us. I have had my tutorial group all morning and I took advantage of this to do my presentation about the Comenius Project to the three groups we now have at 1r Batx.

I have only given them a simple introduction and advised them that there will be a meeting next week for the people who are interested in participating. I have told them that if the project is oversubscribed then there will be a process of selection that will consist of an interview, in English. It is difficult to really gauge the level of interest among the students we will just have to wait and see I suppose.

This afternoon at home I received a surprise phone call from the Father of one of my students of last year. He was checking on the times for the project in school, 4-5.30 on Thursday afternoons, because his son has got into the EOI and he will be studying in the first session every thursday. At least I know that one person is interested in it!

Waiting for notification

Today I phoned Nuria Estrada at Ensenyament and asked the simple question about, "what do we do now?" She told me, very briefly, that now the only thing I can do is just wait for official notification that we have been approved. This has to arrive from Barcelona and should be here next week. Once we get it I will have the details of what to do next and how to access the money.

The money is really the important bit as things are starting to fall into place and I could probably reserve the flights for November now. Of course as Wizzair is a low cost airline the sooner the better.

Work to do and Katrin's webpage

Today I have to phone Nuria and find out about what I have to do now, Dominika said that a contract has to be signed. In addition I have to discover how the money has to be controlled and administered as I ought to try to finalise the flights to Poland in November as soon as possible before the price starts to go up on Wizzair.

Katrin, in the mail she sent, gave us an address for the web page that she has done (or has been done for her) for the project.

Which at first glance I liked a lot, it is clean and impressive, especially in these colours. The only link that works at the moment is the one directly to her school's page, we will have to wait and see how the rest work. Her school page is nice too, it uses the same photo, but doesn't contain an awful lot and is only in german. In her mail she mentioned that she has seen my blog, the only problem is that I don't know which one she means, this one?

Our work programme

Things are finally starting to move, although perhaps even too fast now.

Yesterday I connected to the Comenius e-mail account and was astounded to see that there were six unread mails waiting for me, six! This is a never before seen occurence, not all of them were even from Dominika. Among these mails was our programme of work, a reminder that we have to sign the LLP contract and a mail from Katrin in Germany.

The programme of work is the same as we originally agreed upon in the application so no surprises there although I think that it is now time to start to fine tune what we want the students to do. We all agreed to make a blog for the project, do we really mean only one? Just one run by the teacher? I would be inclined to get the students to all make one individually and then coordinate them through the teacher's blog. Additionally Dominika talks about 30 odd students in one of her mails whereas Katrina only mentions 22 of hers. I thought that 20/22 was the maximum we could have in the group?

Dominika has also mentioned holding an inauguration for the project at the same time in all countries... I am not sure if the powers that be here even want to hold an inauguration. I shall have to check and see, maybe we should, get the press here and invite Nuria Estrada to attend. We'll have to see, whatever we do I don't think it will be soon. We also have to create a logo, one for all the participating schools would probably be best, that means the students here have to create some possible logos and choose one to be submitted to Dominika without delay.

Changes, Birgit has left the school in Germany, a shame that I liked her. Stella has changed her e-mail address in Cyprus, so that's why she never answered anything and Laura is not in the school in Italy anymore. Now I can understand why Dominika made a point of it being important to have two people coordinating the project in each country, we are falling like flies.

I now have to mail her and let her know about the video channel and comment all the other things, I will say hi to Katrin at the same time.

Last gasp surprises, Approval and Youtube

Today has been one of those days, a day for last gasp surprises that make for a bit of a nervous atmosphere.

We got our timetables today and I saw that Manel hadn't taken off the couple of hours with the first year I knew I had doing an AAL, this is a subject as an alternative to religion. He had said he would take this off my timetable to compensate for the time I will have to spend doing Comenius stuff.

I went to ask him about this and he said that he hadn't done so as Nuria Estrada hadn't been able to confirm that we had had the project approved, in fact he added that the problems according to her lay with the coordinator. Dominika.

We agreed that we needed to sort this out asap so that he could wind up the timetable as once it is done there is hardly any way it can be then changed. So I said I would phone Nuria and if necessary, and she didn't mind, I would also phone Joana Vidal in Barcelona to see what on earth was happening. On talking to Nuria I discovered that the "problems" are the same rumours about problems that were around at the end of last year, meaning that Dominika had said she wanted to give up teaching and we would all be minus a coordinator. Apart from this she simply hadn't been given the list of approved projects and couldn't tell us what was happening. I asked if I could phone Joana directly and she agreed. This I then did and got nowhere so I handed it all back to Manel and said he ought to phone her, him or Francesc as she is likely to get annoyed if a lowly teacher like me bugs her about this.

Fortunately in the time it took to give Manel the number and find Francesc Nuria phoned back and told us that yes, we have been approved!! So now it is all steam ahead.

I did find time this morning to create a channel on Youtube for videos.

Of course there is nothing there at the moment. (Actually I have just updated this and now there is a video 9-9-08)

This is the address and I hope to record myself, ugh, giving a welcome to the other partners and then send them all a mail with the address, then I hope that they will record themselves and post their videos in turn. The only inconvenient is that I will have to give out the name and password to channel and thus leave it open to unwitting sabotage. Still it is a risk worth taking.

Back to school

The first of September and back to school, well more or less anyway. We don't have the students back until the 14th so until then we have all the preparation stuff to get on with.

There has still been no official confirmation of our participation in the Comenius from the authorities here in Catalunya. I was able to briefly have a word with Francesc, our director, in passing today and all he could say was that he has received something but he didn't say what. I definitely haven't.

The only worrying note is what has been mentioned about the structure of classes in 1r Batx, we wanted them to be as they have before, three groups all at the same time. This is the past has allowed us to mount flexible groups (according to ability) and was going to allow me to seperate out all the students who wanted to participate in the Comenius and have them all on their own as my class within the three. I have now been told that Manel for timetabling considerations can't do that, we can't have all three groups at the same time, so we can't "set" them. If I can't have all the Comenius lot together it will make my job a lot harder and will mean many more hours "fora d'horari". Manel hasn't confirmed this yet to me, I will chase him tomorrow and try to get him to bring me up to speed.

Dominika said she would send a work schedule to all of us but she hasn't yet. Now it is just a waiting game to see how this is all going to shape up.