"Along the main street of the town of Bačka Palanka, where our school is located, a lawyer from the town of Ravangrad, after his service in our town, Karl Mezei, planted, they say, in the 1920s, a plane tree. Our street was called School Square in 1900, because in those years a very important Civic School was built in it. It was built by a Hungarian company, very typical, like most of the schools in Vojvodina at that time.

Our school moved to this school building in 1956, which was later upgraded and renovated.

Our school, like the plane tree, has a similar fate today. Several persistent plane trees in our school yard have survived. The biggest and most beautiful is the one is on which announcements, ads and posters of promising faces of politicians are hung. Next to him, our students smile at the photographer every year. Live and last, as we do. "

Excerpt from a monograph of our school published on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the "Dr Radivoj Uvalić" secondary school from Bačka Palanka.

We who live on the Danube shore expect a nicer view of the world. Will it be alongside  technology that is progressing more and more against the human? Who will be the winner in this race, I am not sure. Maybe quiet water will bring a winner. And until then, we are left to believe that there is still hope for all of us.

Education is a matter of trust, confidence that the school is ready to become a real home of knowledge and learning, trust that the teacher can and wants to move forward and give his or her maximum. That trust in the school and the teachers must be built if we all hope for true progress together.

The teacher is a researcher who has the potential to advance education, to be the carrier of development, to solve many challenges. In other words, the teacher should always go one step further, create, innovate and find new solutions to old and new problems.

The ecological crisis is an inseparable part of the civilization that produces it, and it can be seen as crisis of one mode of production, consumption patterns and economic growth, which is losing its basic human values. Such a life performed by man is out of balance with nature and is realized in a way that the issue of further survival strategy determines the attitude towards the environment.

In our school, an ecological section led by chemistry and biology teachers is active. The far-reaching goal of the section is to get students interested, first of all, for their own future, since choosing an ecological option means directly influencing the environmental scene in their own environment and creating the conditions for a better future. We believe that this is a very important topic in the process of education because it encourages the proper formation of students' attitudes towards protecting the environment in which we live and work.

By promotion of the plan and program of work of the ecological section raises the level of the overall ecological-health culture, imposing prevention of pollution of nature as lifestyle and the way of thinking of adolescents.

Of course, this is not always easy.

We are aware of the fact that our environmental awareness is poorly expressed, and that it deals with one of the fundamental problems in protecting and preserving the nature that surrounds us. Therefore we become part of a global movement and join environmental projects, programs and actions such as "For cleaner and greener schools in Vojvodina", "Plant a Tree", "A Clock for Our Planet", "Eco-Schools"... Topics covered include: climate variability, plastic biodegradation, circular economy, waste sorting, organic and GMO food, energy efficiency, outdoor learning and landfill mapping, planting trees in action 'Plant a tree, plant your oxygen' (in the last campaign 8000 seedlings were planted)... In order to raise environmental and entrepreneurial awareness among students and employees of the school, and prepare them for work on e-Twinning projects, the virtual enterprise Luna-Organik is used through action under the slogan "I save, recycle, profit", as the idea that ​​ecology should become part of the economy.

We celebrate Earth Day with a walk and a story about the conservation of species and their habitats in the protected Tikvara Nature Park. Our students train elementary school students through interesting quizzes and films about environmental disasters.

Integrating these topics into the educational process contributes to the formation of environmentally conscious citizens who will create a healthier environment.

The school has also recognized the need to develop the quality of international cooperation in this field and has applied for training on "My Eco-School and Sustainable Development" within an Erasmus+ project.

The example of good practice that we modestly present can serve as an inspiration to others as it tends to have positive change, new ideas, and makes educational work attractive.

The younger the children, the more spontaneous their learning is, and more like a sponge that absorb everything in front of them. As they grow, "intentionally provoking learning" must have an ever-increasing answer to the question of the expediency of what is learned. The mind simply wants to know why something is working, and it should be accepted as a biological fact. In adults, this becomes even more apparent. Unless it is a matter of intense inner satisfaction, true adult learning generally only takes place when trying to solve a problem or face a challenge.

This is what prompted us to search for motives that would further stimulate ecological awareness. Music is a valve for a person living in a fast-paced world overflowing with information. It has artistic, aesthetic and medical value. We linked music and ecology and simply accepted that eco-culture is actually the latest modern form of spiritual culture of the third millennium.

World Nature Organization is organizing a global Earth Hour action, celebrated on all continents in about 180 countries. With the call to turn off the lights to illuminate the problem, our school becomes part of this global movement and participates in the action five years in a row.

Acoustic concerts to mark The Earth Hour are traditionally performed under the baton of our colleague, a professor of music culture, the City Choir, whose members are teachers and students of our and other Bačka Palanka schools.

Music from movies under candle lights awakens the arrogant and conceited human consciousness, realizing that ecology is the awakening of life's unity, and this is possible only by changing life attitude to nature and by showing respect for the same.

Our audience in the form of colleagues from other schools and their students, members of the local community, parents and our friends, together with us, give their voice to climate change mitigation. Together we send a clear message that every hour can be a clock for our planet that we should think about on a daily basis, and not just when it’s "Hour for our planet" day.

The experiences and lessons that come from such actions have an additional cognitive quality for us teachers because they are the fruit of personal engagement, reflection and operation. Sharing ideas, experiences and dilemmas with colleagues can help strengthen teachers' self-esteem. I believe that this will further lead to improvements in both efficiency and professional satisfaction, i.e. job satisfaction.                                                     

Tatjana Bubanja