LENTINI – During the last week of March 2022, the Riccardo da Lentini Comprehensive Institute of the City of Lentini lit up with color to welcome colleagues from France, Poland and Romania, within the “Erasmus Project”, a magnificent opportunity that the European Union offers to schools. The main objective of this project is to create a cultural and educational exchange between the various European schools. It happens that we have to open up with a flexible and fluid attitude, such as to enrich our experience, placing ourselves as “openminded” individuals, ready to make the cultural and linguistic enrichment acquired available to students. All the teachers of the Erasmus group and beyond organized a magnificent welcome, stimulating a spirit of renewal and rebirth in the Riccardo da Lentinischool. Certainly, this event was the pretext to restart in a fresh and colorful way, after a long period of silence and stasis, due to the pandemic. Thus, the doors of the school opened with flags blowing in the wind, green plants, flowers on the windowsills and stands that told the story of France, Poland and Romania, making foreign guests feel at home. In all this spring-like setting, the welcome and various entertainments could not be missing, characterized by the magic of musical notes, magnificently directed by the teachers of music education. Let’s add the smells and flavors of the local Lentinese culinary history, the traditions, colors and smells of citrus fruits … and the harmony is made! The “Erasmus” colleagues immediately felt welcomed with great sympathy and professionalism, they appreciated the clean, functional and warm environment of the institution that hosted them. Naturally, a moment of professional growth and exchange, the comparison between the didactics and the methodologies of the European schools in question. It goes without saying, how magnificent and diligent all the students of the whole Comprehensive Institute were. They were small artists with their performances of songs, dances, readings and paintings, coordinated with passion and attention, by the teachers of the related disciplines.
The constant and professional participation of the Executive Professor Mauro Mangano and all the management staff is highlighted, a sign of openness and flexibility towards the objectives of renewal, rebirth and growth.
Our warm southern welcome has not been denied, our ancient places have opened their doors, to be appreciated by foreign visitors, so that our small, but precious beauties can be brought to Europe with their heads held high.
The Riccardo da Lentini Institute lived a unique and special experience, not only from the didactic-cultural point of view, but above all from the human and emotional point of view, as the comparison of the various experiences and individual stories, coming from different geographical areas, left an open smile, a deeper look and a greater hope towards the possibility of thinking about a better Europe and an increasingly united world, under a clear sky that looks at him as a scenario of widespread hugs and smiles for a single country called “Earth”.
