TOP Part II, Kevin Kennedy in Ljubljana
During the second collaborative week of the TOP Training Course, a two-year Erasmus+ KA2 project, participants gathered in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Education professionals from all four institutions, including EOI Maspalomas, CPIA, Milan, and Atlantic, visited CDI Univerzum Ljubljana, Slovenia, to continue their work on creating a shareable teacher observation tool, which is the core objective of the project.
Atlantic’s Kevin Kennedy travelled to Slovenia to team up once again with our project partners, who had spent a week with us in March.
On his return, Kevin was full of praise for the hosts at CDI and brought back his insights about the experience.
So trip to Ljubljana and Slovenia was fantastic. And probably the most exciting element of it, and also the worrying part, was the fact that this was my first time as part of any Erasmus project. So I was a little unsure, but quickly realised that there was no problem. It’s just like any other project, working as part of a team. We all had our own strengths to contribute to the project of creating the rubric for teacher observation.
My role was mainly articulating in English all of the ideas that were being shared. We were dealing with many levels of English and people speaking different languages, of course, including Italian, Spanish, Slovenian, and so on. We worked through the rubric and established the questions.
Breathtaking Scenery & Scrumptious Food
The hosts made sure their visitors got the full Slovenia experience, as Kevin explained:
On the second day, we had a cultural day and made our way out to Lake Bled. We saw beautiful, fantastic views of the lake and tried some local cuisines, a lot of them, in fact, to the point I was absolutely stuffed. Mushroom soup, trout on a risotto, a honey brandy. Amazing food from Slovenia.
And we continued up into the mountains around Mount Vogal. This was my first time in a cable car. Seeing the Alps for the first time was certainly a jaw-dropping experience; Colossal mountains.
An interesting cultural aspect I found was observing the heritage of their agriculture and the differences in how they dry hay compared to how we might do it here in Ireland. They have hay sheds with walls where they hang the hay, and that way, they create insulation with the hay itself. Just fascinating to see something similar, yet ever so slightly different to how life is here.
Next Stop: Gran Canaria
The third face-to-face collaboration between the four participating institutions will be in the Canary Islands in March 2026. As Kevin explained, the week in Ljubljana culminated in preparation for Gran Canaria:
On the last day, we were back at CDI Univerzum with our project partners finalising elements of the project and the rubric itself.
And now we plan to continue in March, when we do the third leg of the project and travel to Gran Canaria and visit EOI Maspalomas.
Teachers Observing Pedagogy will come to its completion at CPIA, Milan, this autumn.