Four students – Rowan Taylor , Callan Duncan, Natalia Polonowska and Ruby Whitaker – along with two members of staff – Ms E Walker and Ms M Fullerton – took part in a visit to EPA Carvalhais a fantastic school in North East Portugal as part of our Erasmus + project, ‘Sharing European values using Film and Cinema’.
EPA Carvalhais is a very unusual school. Not only does it teach young people the usual school subjects like Maths, Languages, Science and so on but also teaches young people agricultural skills and animal husbandry. Students at EPA can learn to be vintners, cheese makers or olive oil producers. The school rears their own sheep and goats, keeps horses as well as making their own cheese, olive oil and wine all of which they sell in a school shop to the local community.
Our group were lucky enough to have time to spend exploring Porto for a couple of days before travelling on to the school to meet up with our Erasmus partners. We visited FC Porto football ground and museum, climbed the 240 steps to the top of the Clerigos Tower, wandered along the banks of the Douro River and crossed the iconic Dom Luis Bridge.
We had a fabulous week once we met up with our Erasmus partners from Portugal, Italy, Turkey and Lithuania at the Portuguese school. There was time in the programme to share the work we had been doing at home making the video looking at the social and economic background of our students and the community they live in. Our students had worked with their classmates to research, find data and produce graphs to display the information which they incorporated into their video along with an interview with our head teacher, Mr D Rose.
Our students were involved in Portuguese lessons, sports, dancing and tasting traditional food like ‘Francesinha’. They tried horse riding, cheese making and learnt all about olive oil production.
There was also the opportunity for sightseeing. We visited the beautiful communitarian village, Rio de Onor on the border with Spain, experienced a boat tour along the Douro River to see the wonderful terraced vineyards and visited Braganca Castle and museum.
We also had the great honour of meeting the Mayor of Mirandella, Mr Antonio Branco during our tour of the town. At the Town Hall we were granted permission to take in the view from the mayor’s balcony.
We had a great time in Mirandella, made good friends with our Erasmus partners and are now looking forward to our next opportunity to meet up and share our work in Lithuania in October.
Muito obrigado EPA Carvalhais para sua maravilhosa hospitalidade
