"Cecilia Danieli School" – The First Stone

English-Tech-Plus in Buttrio
The symbolic laying of the first stone of the “Cecilia Danieli School”.
Saturday, March 25th at 10.45 a.m., at the “Cecilia Danieli” Nursery School and Kindergarten.
In attendance were Mr. Benedetti, the Bishop of Udine, the Mayor of Buttrio, the architects of the school, the Principal of the school, Laura Catella, with the Dean of the Collegio Pio X Institute, Mons. Lucio Bonomo, the children of the school and their families.

A School – A Project
Laypeople may think it strange, but it is not the programs, teachers and directors who form the basis of a school but rather a project, an idea of what a man and a woman should be, an idea of the kind of future we envision and desire for our children.

In fact, our school is based on a convergence of vision and wishes (Danieli and the Collegio Pio X school of Treviso), which has become the educational project we refer to as “English Tech-Plus”. This project stems from a specific desire to encourage each child/student to articulate his or her abilities while helping them to become happy men and women, because they are original, fulfilled human beings, and to give meaning to the various experiences, information and contacts that surround them because of their enhanced ability to manage the future in which they will play leading roles.

We have come up with a complete, consistent educational program that is also flexible so that each child can express his/her talent and potential.

The project will focus on developing and consolidating basic skills according to the foundation of the Italian school system (knowing how to read, understand and write in one’s own language to build and strengthen one’s thinking and communicating abilities), together with the learning of the English language (10 to 12 hours per week and native-speaking teachers, subjects taught in English and CLIL courses) so that the children can learn to open up to the world with self-assurance, and through the use of new information technologies that constitute the essential tools for the future. Educational robotics, taught from the third year, is emblematic of our project: teaching children to use technology intelligently and creatively, while acquiring new forms of language and doing small projects on their own, so that they are not simply passive learners and can begin to grasp the processes that govern certain phenomena. An innovative, active, shared and collaborative way of learning that allows each child to develop a passion for research and to ask “pertinent questions”, while developing a sense of self-efficacy and cooperative skills.

And finally, if I may, our school would like to grow by following the model suggested by Pope Francis. A school that “opens hearts and minds to reality, with its wealth of facets and dimensions, and that knows how to develop a sense of what is true, a sense of what is good and a sense of what is beautiful”.

I take this opportunity to thank everyone who believed in this project, and especially the true protagonists - the first-grade children who are here now, their teachers and their families who have placed their trust in our school.

(March 25th, 2017 – Written by the Education Coordinator Laura Catella)