Managing for @ School of Success

Istituto Omicomprensivo "Ridolfi- Zimarino"

The Institute Fullcomprehensive of State "Ridolfi-Zimarino consists of:
• Agricultural Technical Institute (222 students) "C. Ridolfi "established by Royal Decree of 1879
• three secondary schools I° (with 311 students)
• five primary schools (with 457 students)
• Five kindergarten (with 192 children)
for a total of 1182 students from childhood to secondary II°.
The Agricultural Technical Institute (ITAS) specifically aims to train new technicians in agri-food and environment sector, with an educational offer in three distinct addresses and study courses:
1) Environment and Territory Management
2) Production and transformations
3) Viticulture and Enology.
The institute training offer is absolutely consistent with the agricultural vocation of the territory and puts the Institute at the center of the territory as a driver of promotion and awareness activities toward the implementation of innovative and agriculture environmentally friendly tools.
In order to clarify better the instances in which the "Ridolfi" uses to work, we emphasize that, in the province of Chieti, is based about half of the regional agricultural enterprises, involving a large share of local employment, especially youth, in a constant and dynamic search of synergy between tradition and innovation in exploiting the winning features of local agriculture: the quality, the promotion of local products and the integration with the touristic and business activities, such as farm and domestic and international trade of PDO products, which allow long term and secure employment, through refined and high quality agri-food.
In this context, the Institute "Ridolfi" allows the training of specialists with a professional profile of a good standard, given that not only the territory in which it operates, but also the surrounding areas, which accommodates many students, have an economy characterized by valuable agricultural production significantly increasing (especially viticulture and olive), a food industry growing in the trade of local products and an economy that finds a decisive contribution in tourism and farm, constantly expanding in the considered areas.

Furthermore, in connection with the Institute Fullcomprehensive there is the same name Farm company that deals with production, processing and marketing of wine produced in the area, and that excels in the region not only for the wide variety and quality of the wines produced, welcome to a large customer, but also for the distribution and promotion of the DOC and IGT products  of the territory.
Together with the wine cellar, it operates an oil mill for processing of consistent production obtained from the olive groves of the Institute, based on a continuous plant with a processing capacity of about 0.4 tons per hour, which, complete in all its parts, and easy to manage , has solved the problem of disposing of the waste products.
The boarding school attached to the "Ridolfi" ensures the residential to students attending from places difficult to reach with daily public transport or private one.

Adjacent to the Institute there is, also, "Villaggio Agrituristico" aimed at the development of agritourism in the territory according to the indications of the Integrated Territorial Plans, and where the accommodations are represented by seven wooden bungalows that means 14 furnished apartments.

Only by referring to recent years there are many initiatives at national and transnational level that have seen the Institute active part of projects:
• In 2010, the Institute was one of the ten Italian schools selected to participate in the three-year project "Ecogeneration-school friend of the climate," promoted by Legambiente, which provides technical investigations and thermographic analysis on the buildings to be integrated with educational programs to promote sustainable building and best practices aimed at energy efficiency for savings in consumption;
• in 2010, it was the coordinator of the project "Bacchus - paths of knowledge of wine production" LLP-Leonardo da Vinci IVT which saw mobility of n. 24 students of the fifth class in France (Bordeaux).
• Again in 2010, it was the coordinator of the project "Building a Green Europe" LLP-Comenius that aimed to make children aware of environmental problems and to work together to find common solutions to their solution
• In 2010, the Institute has been selected as one of 50 schools allowed in the biennial European project "Caldys 2" EACEA that was aimed at improving the provision of training for pupils and create opportunities to develop and exchange good practices among schools and concerned those students with specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and dysgraphia and aimed to overcome the difficulties of learning through the use of new technologies
• in 2011 it was partner school of Project LLP-Comenius "Look what we have done" on the theme of pollution and on the identification of possible solutions;
• in 2012 it was a partner of the LLP-Comenius project "Secrets of Newton's apple," focused on the methods of science teaching with the use of technologies that involved pupils of secondary school in Scerni, part of the Fullcomprehensive Zimarino Institute.

For several years, some teachers of the Institute are very active on the digital platform of the European Commission for the schools of Europe "E-twinning", actively participating in various projects on art, food, reading, mathematics; this activity is also supported and encouraged by the managment of the school given the valuable resulting experience of sharing and Europeanization.
The staff and teachers gradually involved in these projects have therefore acquired valuable skills relevant to the success of mobility projects and transnational cooperation, and in particular skills
• in identifying the educational objectives
• in the creation of networks and local and transnational partnerships
• at linguistic and ICT level
• in problem solving and team working.

1st meeting: presentation--»