The 10th Junior High School of Iraklio is a public school located in a suburb of Iraklio, Crete, Greece with 40 teachers and 3 non-teaching staff for student support. 375 students, aged 12-15 attend the school. They mostly come from the areas nearby, while there is a number of students who come to school from other rural areas by bus. The students have a wide range of social and academic backgrounds and come from lower and middle class. Several students at the school are struggling financially and receive financial assistance to transfer them to and from school. Also, 40 students with diagnosed difficulties (learning difficulties, autism spectrum, etc.) attend with specialized support in the form of parallel support, personalized learning plans and help from a psychologist or other staff. An important part of the school's students are students with ethno-cultural peculiarities (immigrants, minorities). All these students are always very hard working and enrich school life. All of the students finishing our school, continue to one of the several types of Senior High School, namely, General or Vocational. In general, students face particular emotional and learning issues, show average or low school performance, are characterized by lack of stimuli and ambitions and little familiarity with culture and the arts, but place particular emphasis on digital literacy and group and innovative activities. There have been environmental projects carried out in our school such as EURONET 50 / 50 and projects for local tradition, health and nutrition. Also, we have been very active on e-twinning projects: we have worked on 5 different topics, with various schools from all over Europe and have acquired a European Quality Label. We have got a modern computer lab (with 13 workstations) and another outdated but refurbished (with 10 workstations), interactive boards in four of our classrooms and projectors in all the other classrooms.
We are also trying our best to modernize and improve our teaching methods. During the latter years, the building of the school has doubled in size giving space and extra labs for technology, art and a huge library to carry out activities.
GREECE
