MAÇKA ANADOLU İMAM HATİP LİSESİ

 

Maçka Anadolu İmam Hatip Lisesi is a vocational (theological) secondary school located in a small town, Maçka. 
Most of our students come from rural areas, for that reason they don't have equal opportunities compared with students from urban centers. Some of the students are brought up in families with huge financial problems; in labour families who have nothing to do with history, European citizenship etc.; and in such socio-cultural and financial circumstances which considerably restrict their opportunities. Being a disadvantaged school in the town, it is natural we experience some problems related to social exclusion.      On the other hand, we also have many students who are good at learning. Unfortunately we receive less gifted, motivated and successful students every year and the school tries to win a respectful reputation in a wider local and regional community and motivate students to get enrolled by taking part in many different extra curricular activities and projects amongst which are 1 Comenius project (Local Identities Forming Europe), 1 national project (TÜBİTAK project, which was one of the selected projects among the entire city) and 1 e-twinning project (Linking Europe, which was awarded the European Quality Label).

Working in a theological school and teaching classes with mixed abilities is rather challenging, as our students come from different elementary schools with different knowledge, especially in core subjects such as history, geography, the Turkish language and English, so teachers feel the need to search for new, innovative and motivating methods of teaching these core subjects, trying to find the right balance teaching students of lower abilities and students with higher abilities who might feel neglected and bored.  Therefore, the teachers in our school are aware of the fact that we need to follow the latest methods and trends in teaching core subjects such as history, geography, languages etc. in order to keep our students motivated and make sure no one is left behind. 

We search to find more involving and motivating ways of engaging all our students into the process of their education and of teaching them to take more initiative in their future careers and life. For our students we try to open as many opportunities as possible to show them that the world is wide open even though they come from a small community. We would like our students to experience, also in practice and real life, that they share the same hopes and ideals as other youngsters across the continent. To make the students, parents and the others believe in the possibility of our students' success; and to continue the spirit of internalisation in our school, this Erasmus+ partnership will be a good concrete motivation.

Bearing in mind Turkey is one of the candidates countries of European Union, we are very eager to participate in this project as a partnership of this nature respresents, in a way, growing together in Europe. Participating schools come from different European countries with different school standards and systems, and we truly believe both our teachers and students will have enormous benefit of it. The enlargement of the EU is a gradual and carefully managed process and new members can only join when all the EU requirements are met. Therefore, this project will broaden our teachers' and students' horizon to  discover EU’s history, rules, policies, values and standards before being fully member of EU. By contacting European social and cultural realities, our students will clearly perceive their own cultural heritage and inevitably express and share their own identity features thanks to this project. 

The project will give them the opportunity to communicate with other students from foreign countries, exchange experiences, cultural knowledge, views on life as well as improving their knowledge of Europe. They will acquire and improve their language communication and ICT skills, among others, as well as gaining a broader vision of Europe.