United States
Meridian World School is located in Round Rock, Texas, a suburb of Austin. Austin is the beautiful capital city of Texas and is known as the “Live Music Capital of the World.” Meridian is a public, tuition-free charter school offering an inquiry-based curriculum for grades K-12. There are approximately 865 students in kindergarten through 5th grade; 800 in 6th through 12th grade. Class size is limited to: 22:1 in kindergarten and first grade; 25:1 in 2-12. School runs from 8:30 to 4:30 and classes are 1.5 hours in length, which means that we are on a rotating A/B schedule. Our students take part in many service learning projects and volunteer opportunities in the community throughout their time at Meridian. Meridian was voted the #6 high school in the United States last year. This is the first time that we’ve taken part in ePals and I look forward to learning how to participate in international projects!
Spain
Vega de Atarfe School, which is located in the south of Spain - 10 km from the beautiful city of Granada, is one of the two public local schools for students aged 12-18 and also for adults, since we teach Vocational Education Courses. We are quite a big family of 61 teachers and around 700 students sharing a modern building. Our students come from different social and economical backgrounds which, together with the different nationalities, adds to the diversity of our school.
Lessons start at 8:15 and end at 2:45, that means six one-hour lesssons and one 30-minute break. Two foreign languages are offered as part of the curriculum, French and English. We are taking part in the Bilingual Programme of the regional government, which means that at least 50% of certain subjects - P.E., Music, Biology, Physics & Chemistry and History – must be taught in English. To help with that task, we have a language assistant.
I know that highlighting the importance of foreign languages and English in particular is stating the obvious, but that fact is the reason why we are interested in taking part in this project: practising the language, interacting with peers from different cultures and teamwork can only make my students better.Thanks for letting us be part of this!
France
Collège Joseph Calvet is situated in a rural area of the Pyrénées Orientales called le Fenouillède. Our school is quite small with about 200 kids and 15 teachers . We start school at 8:30 and finish at 4 or 5 pm . We don't have school on Wednesday afternoons and on Saturdays .Most kids take the bus to school because they live in remote villages or hamlets . They learn Spanish and English and some of them also learn Latin . Many kids , boys but also girls, play rugby which is a very popular sport in our region . Even if some kids have learning difficulties thh ey are usually very enthusiastic when working on international projects . They are used to having epals and being involved in global activities .
South Korea
Jungwon Girls' Middle School is located in Seoul, South Korea. We have about 500 students aged from 13 to 15. We have about 40 teachers here. Students come to school aorund 7:50 and goes home 3 or 4 pm. Our school has worked on International Exchange work since 2008 and we have two sister shools in Taiwan. We visit each other every two years. Also from last year, our school has worked on Global Scholars program for year 7 students. Our school joined "Collective Story Project" last year and we had lots of fun, during the whole project. Can't wait to start this wodnerful new journey with all the great teachers and students around the world!
Morocco
Almassira Alkhadra High School is located in a southern region of Morocco called Souss Massa. Massa Town is well-known for its beautiful beaches, landscapes and argan trees and the rare Northern bald ibis. Our school was built in 1974. It includes both middle school and high school. In high school, there are 4 streams: sciences, economics, literature and human sciences. We have around 1,600 students and 84 teachers. Students have classes from 8 to 12 in the morning and 2 to 6 in the afternoon. Our students here are well known for their hard work, kindness and willingness to participate in any suggested voluntary work. My students took part in many international projects.Our school won the International School Award in 2017.
Looking forward to working with you all!
Romania
The Alexandru Ioan Cuza National College is one of the most important schools in Galati, a city situated in the south east of Romania, by the river Danube. We used to study in an old building until three years ago when we had to move to a different location. Our school is quite big, 915 students study here this schoolyear. They belong to all three school levels - primary, secondary and highschool. Since there are so many pupils and classrooms are not numerous enough, we study in two shifts - there are students who learn in the morning and students who study in the afternoon. They have quite a busy school programme. All of them study two foreign languages; it's either English and German or English and French. They are generally very good at foreign languages.
Sweden
Växjö Internationella Grundskola is a semi-private school located in the southern part of Sweden. We are a Swedish school with an English/academic profile, which means that has 50% of our lessons are in Engish. All language teachers have that language as a mother tongue, for example, the Spanish teacher from Spain, etc.. We have 260 students and we are 36 staff but only 22 teachers. We have kindergarten to grade 9 which is mandatory education here in Sweden. Our lessons are from 8:30-15:30 but the younger kids usually end at 13:00. We are very culturally and economically diverse so we have students from all spectrums of life. When we count how many different languages our students speak ( at least one parent who is native in the language) we have 38 different languages at our school We believe English is essential for the future labour market and our globally diverse world. It is the international language being used at the moment. We as a class think it is very exciting to have such an international connection and we hope we one day meet on Skype with our international classmates!
Greece
Our school, 4th Junior High School of Petroupolis, is a Gymnasio/ Secondary level Education, with 340 students aged 12-15 years old and 30 teachers. It is located at Petroupolis, a suburb of western Attica, 8 km from Athens city center, in a new building (only 5 years old) over a hill with a spectacular view of Athens. It is fully equipped with laboratories for Informatics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology, extra rooms for English, French and German language lessons, terrains for basketball, volleyball, football and Physical education lessons. Four of the classrooms are equipped with interactive whiteboards. There is a spacious library with furniture available for studying and also in Library a plasma TV and a DVD are available and are used in many subjects as a teaching “material”. There is a Ballroom/theatre with a stage and audio equipment, a room for Parents Association and 3 offices (for teachers, sub-directors and school’s director). As our curriculum sets operating hours from 8.15 a.m. to 14.10 p.m. there is a cantina for snacks and not a dining room. But almost every day our school is open until 15.30 due to extra curriculum activities.
Click here to see a video of our school building
Subjects taught in our school are within the national curriculum in the areas Language and Communication, Mathematics, Science, Man and Society, Arts, Physical Education, Informatics and Technology and Counseling. Every year there are extra curriculum project groups of mixed(from all classes) students in areas of Culture, School’s Magazine Publication, Environmental Awareness, Health Education and Sports. The teachers of our school are very interested to develop along with students further extracurricular activities like drawing the interior corridors, making posters and events for special international days, gardening our school garden, participating in activities for charity (recycling and bazaars), theatrical/musical event in the end of school year in our Community local theatre (“Theatro Petras”).
Since 2018 our school has awarded the eTwinning School Label.
And if you click here you can see a video about our school's curriculum