Noemi Lusi, the Italian member of the advisory board, states that using learning objects in teaching may increase students’ interests in European issues.
I deeply believe in teaching and I regard my profession as a mission, a lifestyle, a way of conceiving my existence at the service of our youth and community. Teachers are fundamental to society as they form the pillars of it by daily dealing with youngsters, who are the roots, blooms and flowers of our present and future existence. Whereas they appear to be the mere audience of our daily briefings, they actually are, instead, the everyday constructive correspondents of our building up and reinforcing citizenship.
Transferring content in order to make it easier for them to interiorize abilities and competences is definitely a fundamental task, but teaching should really be regarded as an endless flux of overflowing ideas and feelings, creating and determining a profound interaction which is the basis of interchange, that vital contact on which creativity blossoms and flourishes springing out within our apparently static classroom walls.
We are at the same time teachers, educators and the addressees of continuous direct or indirect messages of request for help in increasing self-awareness, consciousness and discernment. Glances, words, facial and non-verbal expressions of various kinds incessantly ask from us more than mere “content”. They demand a performance which is destined to stimulate self-appreciation and the alert perception of their inner potentialities.
Teaching about European citizenship is fundamental to youngsters in the sense that it donates educators the opportunity to deal with topics, with transmitting self-confidence, alertness and responsiveness to boys and girls and, last but not least, “Values”. The latter are that special “quid” which gives a drop of three-dimensional touch and character to what we are teaching, which would otherwise lay in their minds as mere abstract concepts.
The learning objects (LOs), which we plan and design are vital and substantial tools for young generations to absorb, in a direct, straight forward way, the intrinsic essence of our being European citizens, even beyond the boundaries of our Continent.
