The Comenius programme has added an exciting new dimension to working life for me. Well-motivated students, new friendships, using new technologies and international travel are all part of the positive side of his project and more than compensate for chasing work, meeting deadlines and working lunches. I look forward to seeing the project develop over the next two years

Monica Mahon

"They should be taught both their native cultures and the culture of Europe" that is what Comenius maintained for students and wrote in his "Brief Proposal", when he began to prepare for the day when it would be possible to rebuild society through a reformed educational system. More than three centuries later we can that this is still one of the most important targets in the new Europe, and which all through the Union should be reached by means of a better and reciprocal understanding.

In January 1998 1 was requested by our national Agency if 1 felt like going to Slovakia to try to get my school involved in a new European project. At first I thought that after more than twenty years carrying out similar activities it was time to leave this task for younger teachers. One week later 1 was feeling happy in a very cold climate but very warm atmosphere in Bratislava and trying to form a partnership among more than sixty Slovakian colleagues and sixteen others as a whole from Austria, Denmark, Ireland and Spain (the ratio was not proportional as only one Slovakian school would be allowed to participate per every two from the other invited countries). Now I feel that we, Monica Sascha (the former co-ordinator for Gymnazium J Papanka), Zuzana and myself succeeded in outlining a very ambitious project in a too short time.

1 feel also satisfied when 1 see that about a hundred of our students and most of our colleagues and staff members either directly or indirectly have been taking part during this first year.

As for the transnational meetings that have been held, we should all congratulate ourselves for the important role that they have played showing the reality of each one of the schools visited, and letting us meet the students and share their enthusiasm and will to know about the other students involved, not to mention the good organisation, hard work, cultural input and great time spent together.

1, for my part, have learnt about Jan Amos Komensky, and also that in a Europe still shifting in a utilitarian and materialistic direction there are still European teenagers that fortunately find wholly satisfying the fact of being interested in knowing about everyday life and culture of their classmates from other countries, and look forward to meeting them and sharing friendship, new experiences, a bit of adventure and the feeling that they are closer to one another than they were just a few months ago.

Thanks to all of you for having made me feel like a beginner eager to learn and share, and realise that teaching is still "rapid, pleasant and thorough "..

Bernardo Marín

I like teaching English and I love working with young people. But working on the project was something that I enjoyed very much.

It wasn’t just because of the topic of our project, but also because of the students involved in it. All of them were volunteers who decided to join the project and spend their free time working on it. It has been quite a difficult job. Every month we had to work out a certain task and just then my students realised it was not as easy as they thought it would be.

A very important thing was the fact that they signed each of their work and so felt the responsibility for what they did. I think they loved working on the project, they looked forward to each letter, postcard, note or e-mail from their friends in Dublin, Madrid and Bratislava. They enjoyed working with a computer and sending their message by an e-mail. And although sometimes it looked like homework, they always did everything on time and helped me a lot with everything. If I should speak as their teacher of English and the

co-ordinator of the project at our school, it has given them a lot of new experience, knowledge and new friends and an opportunity to improve their English.

The role of the co-ordinator was very demanding, I’ve spent a lot of my free time working on the project but the enthusiasm of my students was the best reward.

Zuzana Kudzejova

On behalf of all the students and teachers involved in the project Socrates, Comenius Action 1 at Gymnazium Jana Papanka in Bratislava Slovakia I would like to emphasise that we have just completed a very fruitful and successful first year. This project has given us an excellent opportunity to learn about many aspects of life in two countries, that is Spain and Ireland, and at the same time to share our own experience and teach our partners and friends in the project about Slovakia.

One of the most important features of this project is the fact that except the "official" or planned part, that is the work on the individual project topics, there also existed the informal, non-planned part. I mean the correspondence among the students involved in the project concerning out- of-project themes and communication. A similar feature occurred in the work of the co-ordinators. The three trans-national meetings turned out to >be very helpful to the development of closer relationships and consequently made the mutual co-operation among the co-ordinators much more easier and effective.

Despite the change of the co-ordinator at our school(December 1998), I can say that the programme gradually became very popular not only among students but also among other teachers and this fact makes me confident to predict that the next year of this programme will be even more successful. I would like to thank everyone involved in this wonderful project for their co-operation and effort and I am looking forward to participating in the next year.

Marian Bilik

Email: aidancbs@iol.ie