Flashback on Comenius – fast forward on Erasmus +

 

Prof. Sabina Stanila

Colegiul National “Mihai Eminescu”, Bucuresti



“Teacher, I saw you are part of a Comenius Group on Facebook. Tell us about Comenius.”

And I tell them. “Do you remember that I was gone for a week at the end of February. I told you I was in England on a training course and the funding came from the EU through this Comenius programme. This was the former EU’s education programme which was replaced by Erasmus+. You can find information on Erasmus + on the website of our national agency for community programmes in the field of education and professional training. Through this new programme you can study abroad when you are university students.”

“How do we do that?”

“You choose a university abroad where you want to study and then you have to download an electronic application form from the national agency website. You fill it in, it’s not easy, but you can do it and there are lots of documents to help you. Also the national agency employees are ever so very helpful. After you fill it in you just press the submit button in the form, and that’s it, you have submitted the form. If your application scores high, you are awarded funding for your studies abroad. All education expenses are paid through Erasmus +.”

“Can you give us the website?”

I write the website on the blackboard.

“Thank you.”

Their eyes have opened now, are wider than before as if to absorb the broad horizons of Erasmus + which can be their window to the world. A new perspective, a new opportunity, a new way. And incidentally today this new phrase has come up again during the lesson: “step off the beaten track.” Our lesson is about narratives, I teach them “flashback,” and give them a pretext for writing a brief narration in which they have to use, inter alia, “off the beaten track.”

Perhaps this is the best dissemination – the retelling of my Comenius story. It is the story of an individual mobility – which means that I applied for a training course in Ipswich, the UK, and was granted the funding. Therefore at the end of February this year (2014) I went to Ipswich which offered me the additional advantage of visiting the neighboring towns of Cambridge and Norwich. Mention should be made of another exciting aspect which the concept of mobility implies prior to and after the event: you have to make all the necessary arrangements, manage the budget you are granted. You are the manager of your own individual project.

The training course itself covered a topicality issue – using technology for the teaching of English. It lasted one week and the organisers (International Study Programmes) did a great job altogether but mostly by putting together participants enrolled on the one-week and the two-week courses. There were 17 participants from Bulgaria, Poland, Finland, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Hungary. I feel my teaching skills and knowledge have improved thanks to the courses taught by Graham Workman (and you can test some of the resources and methods incorporating technology at www.grahamworkman.com), I have become more confident, I saw some beautiful and salient places of the Anglo-Saxon culture and civilization, I made so many friends with which I keep in touch and we can work together in future partnerships.

And so the story goes.