What do you have to expect from the PERSE method?
Last month we just opened our first open call for Youth Workers, looking forward to focusing with them on non-formal and informal education addressed to young people (15-29 years).
Our partners, located in Italy, Greece, Portugal, France and Martinique, will be the facilitators of the two weeks e-learning with 42 participants.
In order to be prepared for this wonderful occasion of peer-to-peer education, in July, we met all together online and tested our educational modules during the C1 Train the Trainer Programme. Direct experimentation is the first rule for our method, which joins Art-based learning, Science Inquiry based learning and Technology based learning. So we exchanged our competencies and knowledge, starting from a common approach, including project-based methodologies, experiences, specific materials and techniques.
You would be surprised that the most relevant words used to describe our PERSE method in the process of self-construction are engagement, freedom, well-being. But these are precisely the values and the pillars of our educational method: learning by personal experience, having the opportunity to make mistakes and improving self-confidence and transversal soft skills. These are the goals of the Training Programme for Youth Workers too. We need creative teachers and tutors to improve creative thinking as a powerful skill for young generations.
Some of the first comments received from our trainers were: ‘the session was [..] open and dynamic, ‘very communicative and positive’, underlining how they enjoyed working in subgroups and felt confident experimenting with what was asked from them.
All these reflections arise quite natural if you think of the inspirational mindset behind our project.
Accepting the 1960 Nobel Prize for literature, the French poet Saint-John Perse made an inspiring speech, inviting everyone no longer to a considered artist and scientist as hostile brothers because “they are exploring the same abyss and it is only in their modes of investigation that they differ”.
As he pointed out, “In truth, every creation of the mind is first of all «poetic» in the proper sense of the word; and since there exists an equivalence between the modes of sensibility and intellect, it is the same function that is exercised initially in the enterprises of the poet and the scientist”. In other words: creation.
Applications to our Training Programme for Youth Workers are welcome until October 10