Journey to excellence: our experience at Friesland College
We are two Italian teachers and we joined the European project J2E – Journey to Excellence, that has the aim of exchanging professional competences of VET staff. We both work in VET schools for ENAC Ente Nazionale Canossiano, a non-profit organization which provides education and training, consultancy and vocational guidance, professional retraining and labour market services through its several Canossian Schools and VET centres.
We choose to visit the Friesland College especially for the innovative teaching method: the Work Based Learning. Our expectation was to see how the “learning by doing” method was applied in order to reach competences widely expendable on the labour market, with a particular focus on the so called “soft skills”. During our visit at the College we visited many departments and we saw not only how practical is the teaching method during lessons, but also the strong personalization of the programme, starting from the student’s attitudes. We found very interesting also the relationship with the companies and the high importance that is given to them in the construction of spendable professional programmes, in order to fill the gap between school and job market.
The service that struck us most was the Rebound Center: the care that is given to drop out students it has been really illuminating, especially because it was given not only a study support but also individual importance and promotion improving self confidence and social inclusion.
We had a great time in Leeuwarden, thanks to the kind hospitality of all the staff of the College who accompanied us in a highly professional way.
We hope that this visit will be the first of a strong collaboration for the next years.
Martina and Vera