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Our goal is to get students interested for studies, motivate them to attend school, make school`s life more interesting and attractive for students, so we organized several creative activities, courses and seminars for students, teachers and parents

“Heartbeat of the school is the students, but strength of the school – teachers.” (L.Štasule) If a teacher is happy, with new and creative ideas, then also the students will definitely like their lessons even more. So, teachers were cheered up by the Narmanda Folk school`s lecturer Anda Pēkšēna with her tuition course ‘’Professional burnout reduction, communication skill improvement and creative method learning’’. All day long teachers were working practically, gained knowledge on how to be in accordance with themselves, what can help for knowing yourself and how to work, so there would be no professional burnout. Teachers were learning practical things, raised and set their goals and learned how to reach them. As well as they responded to the question: “What gives teacher the satisfaction of their work?”

At the end of the day there was a school conference, attended by the parents of students. Very often there are situations where ’s a communication barrier between school and parents. It happens for various reasons, blocking both of the sides to reach an objective. How to solve these situations? What are the typical communication problems? What can the teacher do to improve the communication? Social educator Anna Zaula from Riga Centre Humanitarian Secondary School Language school shared her experience about students and taught cooperation and the parent role in it. The lecturer, with real examples from practice, told parents about the teacher duties and responsibilities. She also said that the teacher is a human just like them, and they are very interested that their children study with joy and graduate from school.

The same day students were working in a creative workshop ‘’TĀSI TAISI’’. The main objective of the creative workshop was to introduce students, teachers and parents with one of the oldest craft – birch bark processing. To successfully reach this goal, there was a specific auditory – students, providing that they would share their newfound experience with their family, who would transfer the information even further. Lesson was created and conducted by craftsmen Madara Putna and Kaspars Zvirbulis.

            Older students were learning how to be a leader, and the lesson was conducted by a Business Administration college director Jānis Stabiņš. The goal of the workshop ‘’Be a leader” is to encourage secondary school students and future students for choosing a purposeful career, so in this class students learnt successful career preconditions, discussed about their questions and shared their future goals. Being a leader, that only doesn’t mean being the chief, it means being able to present their ideas, uphold them, be confident about ourselves and know how to work as a team. For the students these skills will come in handy in every job.

            We believe that students motivation for studies is also the motivation to go to the school  which offers interesting lessons and that are different from the compulsory lessons. So, in our school, we organized a creative masterclass „Technic creativity” , where students, as well as parents constructed cars, robots, helicopters, etc., from used electronics and parts. There was also a lesson „Datorika” , where the students mastered programming and newest technology utilization. The lesson was conducted by Līga Krūmiņa.

            After the seminars, lessons and workshops, there was applied the survey for all the involved groups. 97% of the interviewed parents and teachers considered that seminars and workshops,  like provided, were needed.

            Respondents in the offered seminars and lessons learnt new methods that gave initiative not to be afraid to do things differently and  to share new ideas, as well as cooperate to solve common problems. 85% of the interviewed senior students said, that ‘’Be a leader’’ workshop helped them to believe in their skills and encouraged them to start something new. 100% of the younger students were excited about the masterclasses and  they are ready to visit school even in their holidays for the workshops. Gathering the survey results, we concluded that the chosen workshops and seminar topics were very useful and united us to a common goal – motivate students to get their education, by cooperating.

            If the school offers interesting lessons where the parents are involved, then the student will want and will come to school!