Official website: https://www.teachersrise.eu/
TeachersRise is the teacher training initiative by “Mobility and Cooperation” (http://www.mobilityandcooperation.eu/) and was informally developed as an independent teacher training initiative in 2020 during the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic to respond to the emerging needs of resilient schools facing several challenges compounded by an unprecedented global crisis. Its team is made up of a network of experienced teacher trainers.
TeachersRise specialises in the provision of professional development courses and language immersion training programmes for teachers in English and other languages. TeachersRise is dedicated to teachers and school staff who want to undertake professional development in a friendly atmosphere for learning and transformation.
Early in 2021, TeachersRise evolved and consolidated in the “Mobility and Cooperation SRL” organisation, which took over its network and will develop it further. “Mobility and Cooperation” operates at its headquarters in Padova (Italy) and opened its new location in Dublin (Ireland) in 2021, and new locations in Barcelona (Spain), Florence (Italy), Rome (Italy) and Valletta (Malta) in 2023. It will originate further activities in other cities in Europe.
Their plan is to be established as one of Europe’s leading Erasmus+ organisations by opening various locations in Europe and offering further services such as Erasmus+ work experiences and cooperation projects.
TeachersRise’s Memberships and Network
Mobility and Cooperation SRL is member of Banca Etica because they believe in the ethical finance principles and in the underlying vision of the world. They are also members of the renewable energy cooperative ènostra because they believe they must contribute to reducing the environmental impact of electricity production and consumption. They contribute to offset the carbon emissions of their course participants by planting new trees through the technical services of their “Etifor” partner.
Erasmus+ Funding
They work in collaboration with Erasmus+ funded schools to organise creative and innovative training courses (Key Action 1) and partnerships (Key Action 2) funded by the European Union. TeachersRise brings together established and emerging teacher trainers with educational experts from a variety of professional fields and disciplines in order design and deliver the best experiential and interactive training courses.
Working with the MVPA
In December 2020, then headmistress of the MVPA Ms Simone Attard and teacher of English Jonathan McBee attended a series of webinars carried out by The European Union Programmes Agency (EUPA) with local schools who had expressed interest in participating in the Erasmus+ project for the first time. Another series of webinars and interactive workshops was offered to participants, this time organised by TeachersRise.
The course aims to help teachers learn about the content and structure of the Erasmus+ Programme, how to fund their teacher training courses and successfully manage these projects for their school. The webinar series consisted of one-hour webinars held in March/April for five consecutive Wednesdays with free access to video-recording and useful material. Furthermore, we were given the opportunity to schedule personal video calls with the trainers to discuss our specific questions and challenges in a one-to-one setting.
The project was originally envisioned as a way to identify other schools in Europe that share at least some of the MVPA’s aims and goals, and then reach out to them and discuss best practices that better serve our unique students. Unfortunately, months of research still did not yield any partners who fulfilled this criterion. Our trainers and contact persons within TeachersRise were helping us all throughout, and when it became clear that we would not find partners as originally envisioned, they proposed a different solution. They offered us the option of taking a series of lessons with them, lessons they would design specifically for our project. And that is how TeachersRise became the MVPA’s project partners.
