Professor Roberto Castaldo guided his students in the creation of a website
which facilitates the relationship between citizens and the Public Administration. He teaches computer science at the Casalnuovo di Napoli branch of ISIS Europa in Pomigliano D'Arco.
Changing schools requires the contribution of many subjects: parents, institutions, citizens, third sector associations, but teachers have a central role in this process. Junior Achievement, the largest non-profit organization in the world dedicated to economic-entrepreneurial education in schools, is well aware of this. Every year JA Italia rewards the teacher who has distinguished himself most during the year by bringing innovative projects to the school by awarding him the “JA Italia Teacher of the Year Award” which this year went to Professor Roberto Castaldo of ISIS Europa in Pomigliano d'Arco.
A computer science teacher at the Casalnuovo di Napoli branch, the professor, together with Professor Angela Serpe, guided students in the creation of Europa Community Service, a website and an app to facilitate the relationship between the citizens of the municipality of Casalnuovo and the public administration.
The project is based on the Service Learning methodology, whose motto speaks for itself: "learning is useful, serving teaches". If in traditional schools you learn in class with the sole aim of getting a good grade and often forgetting the content as soon as the test is over, in Service Learning the activities in the classroom are linked to those beyond the classroom.
The Europa Community Service project, which began before the Pandemic, involved 2021 students from six different classes in the 2022/188 school year and was made possible thanks to the collaboration of the principal and several teachers who agreed to get involved, review their subject programs and help the students in this project. A mini-company was created in each class, following the methodology of the Junior Achievement Enterprise in Action project, and assigning roles: CEO, Human Resources and so on. The peers of all the classes met twice a month to exchange information, coordinate and monitor the work they were doing.
Europa Community Service initially planned to create a public relations office in the spaces specifically granted by the municipality where the classes would take turns, but with the advent of the pandemic this was not possible. The boys and girls, however, did not lose heart and proposed alternative digital solutions, personally taking care of the creation of both the website and the app and of a chatbot that allows citizens to ask questions and get answers to the most common queries.
Through the site, which is now linked to the municipality's pages and receives thousands of visits a day, users can learn, for example, how to request and use SPID, how to enroll their children in local schools or find information on the main social networks, gaming sites and streaming platforms to better understand this world and be able to help their minor children.
"The journey with JA Italia was enlightening for me and for the kids because we really saw what the school could be useful for if everyone rowed in the same direction. The fact that Junior Achievement provides a broad educational offering with projects for the acquisition of soft skills and entrepreneurial education that embrace schools of all levels is a sign of the importance of the offering itself and how it can contribute to improving the school as a whole", said Professor Castaldo.
"Teachers are our main allies, thanks to them we can help students grow and become aware citizens, as well as acquire skills, such as the ability to work in a team, which will be essential in the world of work. The project created by Professor Castaldo and his colleagues together with students of ISIS Europa is proof that an evolution of the school towards a teaching that goes beyond the simple transmission of notions, becoming increasingly experiential and useful to the community, is possible", added Miriam Cresta, CEO of JA Italia.
The project implemented in Professor Castaldo's School has been included by INDIRE among the best practices in the volume "Guidelines for the implementation of the idea Inside/outside the school Service Learning".
Article published on 5 October 2022 - 21:00
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