Gimnazija Gospić
High school Gimnazija Gospić is situated in Gospić, a small town on the way from the continental part of Croatia to the Adriatic Sea. The area is called Lika and is surrounded by the world-famous National park Plitvice Lakes, Nature parks Middle and South Velebit, rich with floral endemic species and clean rivers. It is a town with a long history.
Gimnazija Gospić is a secondary school with 200 pupils (age15-19) and 28 teachers today. Many famous people, like Nikola Tesla, were taught in this school through its history. The official language in this school was German in 1860 when it was founded.
Today we teach our pupils English, German as well as Latin. Our school offers pupils some extra programs in IT, Geography, English, Biology, and Chemistry which help pupils to determine their future careers. Lessons start at eight in the morning and finish at two in the afternoon with a twenty-five-minute break after the second class. Thus pupils have chance to practise different activities in the afternoon.
Most of our pupils live in the surrounding neighborhood, but there are still about 30% of them who travel to school by bus. They come from middle-class families.
Our school is trying to offer pupils motivation for quality education, to participate in international projects stimulating their creativity through the promotion of pupils’ skills through non-formal education as well as to work on pupils’ ‘ self – confidence in practicing and improving their English alongside with discovering their own potentials. We hope that we will be able to embed Etwinning and Erasmus+ projects in the normal curriculum. We would like to promote a sense of European citizenship through youth and teachers’ exchange.
Most of our teachers took part in different projects involving subjects like ICT, Maths, Science subjects, Geography, Art, History, PE and Music. They are trying to introduce new methodologies into their teaching like CLIL and PBL methodologies, also developing their ICT skills as well as language ones. Pupils take part in some national and international competitions in science subjects, creative writing, drama challenges, translation, and sports competitions.
Our school has participated in 9 eTwinning projects so far and won two European Quality Labels for them. “Energy for Life” and “Climate and Climate changes” were two of our eTwinning projects. We started new ones in 2019. We were awarded the eTwinning School label for 2019 – 2020. Since September 2015 we started three Erasmus + projects in KA2 +, Strategic partnerships.