During the second week of July, the Get up and Goals! project invited teachers from some countries involved in the project for an International Seminar for Teachers called Global Challenges in the world – challenges in our teaching, hosted in Viana do Castelo, Portugal.

The Seminar had the participation of 35 teachers and project coordinators from Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Spain and UK. There were guests also from the Portuguese team involved in the project – lecturers from ESE-IPVC, teachers participating in the courses and in the experimentation of the educational resources. 

The three days were prepared in order to facilitate the sharing among the teachers, their own experience, but also to learn from the participation in some workshops.

In the opening session the participants were welcomed by Linda Saraiva, vice-director of ESE-IPVC, Maria José Guerreiro, council woman of Education, Culture and Turism in the Municipality of Viana do Castelo and Luísa Neves, the national project coordinator. Giordana Francia and Massimiliano Lepratti, as project coordinators, gave na overview of the project, its main achievements so far and its main challenges.

Then, Dalila Coelho, form the Centre for Research and Intervention in Education, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Porto, and Joaquim Marques, Teacher at Pintor José de Brito school made inspiring communications about the Portuguese context of Development Education/Global Citizenship Education (DE/GCE), what does it mean to work in Global Citizenship Education nowadays for a teacher and how these concepts and meanings can be worked, in the classroom, with young people.

Some ice breakers helped the participants to know more about each other and to start a real engagement in the seminar.

To understand more about the situation of the project, a world café was facilitated around the four main fields of the project - training courses, teaching and learning units, self-assessment tools and school/students events.

The first day of work ended with two parallel sessions – a Steering Committee for the project coordinators and a workshop about Media Literacy for GCE for teachers.

The second day was entirely devoted to teachers learning from the experience of other teachers – the microteaching sessions – where each country was invited to share an activity from its educational resources with the others. It was a really diverse and rich day of sharing and learning from each other.

In the evening there was a cultural event, with the presence of a typical group from Viana do Castelo singing and dancing - “Ronda Típica da Meadela” -, and wonderful intercultural moments with music and dances from every country, instruments (guitar, violin and flute), voices… We had a great time together!

The last morning was, again, organised in parallel sessions – a workshop devoted to History teachers about the Geo-History handbook elaborated and tested within the project and two workshops devoted to gender and global inequalities facilitated by local associations from Viana do Castelo.

Before saying goodbye, there was the final session dedicated to evaluation, certificates and group photos!

We ended to a certainty - these moments are very important for everyone that has the privilege to participate in them not only professionally but also personally!

If you wan to, you can visit the full program in the attachment.