ESC: Volunteering in Ahtme school for kids with disabilities

Ahtme School is a school for children with mental disabilities. Our students' age is 7-19 and they have mild, profound or severe disorders. There are 58 students, 33 employees and 16 teachers this year. The school has a modern building, which meets the needs of our learners: we have various workshops, a boarding house, spacious outdoor education area, playrooms, therapies etc. The students attend sand and music therapy, they love cooking classes, make theatre and concert performances. During the last years we paid a lot of attention to finding the ways to provide our students with life skills necessary for the independent future. Every year, teachers of our school take an active part in international projects and are trained in cooperation with foreign partners. This allows you to use the experience of various educational institutions in your work and apply new methods in teaching children with special needs.How do we want to support students in our school? Of course, we want them to become happy and optimistic. We want them to set goals and achieve them; that despite possible failures, their life would be meaningful and effective; that patient and helpful people would live next to them; that they could notice the simplest human joys: the sun, morning, a school bell, a friendly smile, the warmth of a child's palm and many, many beautiful things that every day in our home school gives us. Our students have been taking part in numerous projects, they travelled to many countries and got to know several professions by means of pre-vocational preparation. Here are some examples of our project work in the frames of Erasmus+ programme: “Transition from school into the after-school life through methods of person-centred planning” (2017-2019). The main project output is a website https://pcp.portfoliobox.net/ including different methods of person-centred planning, which includes our findings, collection of best practices and lessons learnt, recommendations for other specialists.These materials can help teachers working with young people with disabilities for supporting them in transition to independent life and the world of work. The main project impact is the fact the teachers/trainers/specialists are better prepared to support their students on their transition from school into the after-work-life in cooperation with other professionals. They acquired the knowledge and tools which are now implemented in each partner institution. "United colours of creativity" (2014-2016) and „United Colours of Creativity for Learners' Future“ (2017-2019). The project target groups are students from mainstream schools and young people with disabilities, who will learn together in multicultural groups. This approach contributes to fulfilling the priority of social inclusion through integrated learning programmes for youngsters from Estonia, Portugal, Turkey, Poland and Slovenia it tackles the issues of inclusion, diversity, equality, gender-balance and non-discrimination in education. The project impact on the participants (age 12-17) will include development of their social, civic, intercultural competences, media literacy and critical thinking through learning in international teams, making video films about the project, being members of the project team and taking active part in the project preparation, organisation and follow-up. The project will also enhance the access, participation and learning performance of disadvantaged learners, reducing disparities in learning outcomes. It will be achieved by implementing the learner-centred approach and providing individual learning plan for each student in the project.„Youth socialising with the help of multimedia“(2017, Georgia) and "Youth socialising through learning different European cultures“ (2018, Cyprus) - youth exchanges which were initiated and written by our students with the support of their teachers. All these projects allowed us to create a team of strong professionals who worked together in order to provide the students with better chances in life.