Monitoring the environment around the Baltic Sea within BSP framework

In November 2020 lyceum 179 in Saint Petersburg held a big regional conference with international participation "High school students’ club as a means of forming students' ecological thinking." All in all there were 4 sections and one of them was international and called “Monitoring the environment around the Baltic Sea within BSP framework”. The participants - students from lyceum 179 and its partner school Tallinn Mustamäe Real Gymnasium shared their projects and exchange ideas with each other.

The conference was in Zoom that gives the opportunity to invite excellent experts as the key speakers. The students were warmly welcomed by Stanislav Babitch national coordinator of the Baltic Sea Project of UNESCO ASPnet in Russia, professor of Saint Petersburg University of Economics, Tiina Sarisalmi UNESCO ASPnet schools’ coordinator in Finland, eTwinning ambassador and Gedy Matisen national coordinator of the Baltic Sea Project of UNESCO ASPnet in Estonia, Tartu Nature House and Aira Unden-Selanden national coordinator of the Baltic Sea Project of UNESCO ASPnet in Finland, Finnish Russian school.

 At first, 10th grade students of lyceum 179 Daria Cherkasova, Margarita Bykova, Emilia Evsukova, Maria Shilova, Maria Tarakanova and Lilian Altavil presented their research related to environmental and medical issues. The outlines can be seen here. The studies were carried out with the help of its social partners from Saint Petersburg Northwestern Medical University and city environmental center. Then students from the 9 th and 12th grades of Tallinn Mustamae Real Gymnasium Eva Lototskaya, Sofia Senkiv, Anastasia Evstifejeva continued with amazing projects. Polina Kondrat report about sustainable development goals in TMRG, and Vlad Antipov told of “Green school” project as a part of educational process.

The many years conference organizer Anna Obuhovskaya, the head of science department in lyceum 179 and Natalia Vergun, the director of Tallinn Mustamäe Real Gymnasium also took part in the conference monitoring students’ performance carefully.

Summimg up the conference Aira Unden-Selanden national coordinator of the Baltic Sea Project of UNESCO ASPnet in Finland, admitted that all the works were at the high level and the variety of themes and views attracted great attention with the experts and participants.  She emphasized that the aim of the project is to inspire students and teachers in each of the 9 countries surrounding the Baltic Sea to work together towards UNESCO values for the more sustainable future.

One of the conference organizers Alla Kushkha said Lyceum has been involved in BSP activities for more than 20 years by now and such an active collaboration stimulates students and teachers to further investigations.

At the end all the participants from Saint Petersburg and Tallinn express hope that the next year they would like to gather for the conference again in one of our neighboring countries immediately without covid restrictions.

Anna Obukhovskaya, Alla Kuskha