I.S.S. Alessandro Volta

Castel San Giovanni - Borgonovo - Italy

https://www.polovolta.edu.it/

The secondary school  “Alessandro Volta” is a comprehensive institute with different courses: vocational (tourism), technical (trading, management and mechanical engineering), second level college of science, foreign languages and social science, which offers a complete and varied educational project. The school has 1100 students and 140 teachers.

We organise courses, events, cultural activities and labs in the afternoon addressed not only to our students but also to their families or to the people of the area, as shown in our report called RAV (self evaluation report),which is the quality system in use within the Italian educational system.

Our institute is considered as the main cultural and social place in the area.

The cultural background is made up of different social and economical contexts; this implies both a critical feature, as there aren’t many cultural incentives, but also it is a great chance in favour of those students and families who cannot commute to a bigger city for their secondary school education. The place in which the school is located is characterized by social and economic diversification; this actually provides more opportunities to organize events and activities focused on improving and stimulating the local area.

We are facing a new multicultural community at school, with students coming from different countries and a lot of them represent a great example of integration and desire to perform well. Of course there are still some problems related to the language spoken in class and to the relationships and communication with their families.

Our strength relies in our students’ availability to face different situations, to cooperate in a very creative way (such as peer tutoring, collaborative learning, working in team, collecting money for those who need some help at school, availability to join extra-curricular courses or to perform in competitions). This aims at raising and developing cultural awareness and knowledge of our area, focusing on local “heroes” and meaningful historical events which frame our cultural identity in order to help students to better understand the present and social situation in our country and in the world, to develop citizenship education and reinforce our European dimension. Another resulting and important target is to make people understand that diversity is a value and not a barrier and communication between different cultures is the best way to solve conflicts.