Our First Impressions from Our First Erasmus meeting for Dealing with Gifted education project, in Spain.

Our school has been working with gifted students for a long time. Since there is no legal framework in our country our work has been in the fields of our eternal feelings, enthusiasm and stubbornness... 

That's why we were very glad to have the opportunity to participate in this project about the Gifted students teaching, and to share good practices with our partners from Spain, Turkey, Greece, Romania and Estonia. During our first meeting in Spain we learned a lot about participant countries' educational systems and their work with gifted students. The project stared with a very interesting activity lead by Sefa Akseki, the project coordinator from the Turkish Team in which teachers had the opportunity to learn about each other in an unique and unusual as well as free and pleasant way. 

After that we had a meeting during which we discussed the project logo, expenses, the distribution of the responsibilities of every of the partners and also about our next meetings.

One of the most important things was to learn about our partners' educational systems, so participant teachers made presentations about their schools, the educational systems and the arrangements and regulations done about the gifted students in their countries.

We attended a very interesting lecture held by Angeles Bueno PhD, from Camile Jose Cela University. We took part in an workshop based on cooperative learning model in which we were divided in various groups and had to work on different tasks. It was a very useful activity and showed us in a way the things from the students point of view. 

We also met some of the present and former gifted students from Colegio Calasanz school. We learned a lot about how they felt, how they passed through the situation - being a gifted student, how they studied, how their lives changed. All this helped us understand the great importance of finding such students and how much help he/she really needs.

In the same time we had a great time during the sightseeing tours in Madrid, Alcald de Henares and Toledo. We learned a lot about Spanish history and culture and we were charmed by the Spanish hospitality.

On the last day we watched the film "Billy Elliot", had a group work on the film in which we discussed the main problems shown and how the characters coped with such a difficult situation. In the evening we watched the musical "Billy Elliot". We were very impressed by music, the actor's performance. 

After a full week spent in Spain, working and having fun with our colleagues from Spain, Turkey, Greece, Romania and Estonia we went back home more confident and maybe skilled in the fields of teaching gifted students, happy because of all these wonderful people that we met and we are looking forward to our next meeting.