The beginnings of the Children and Youth Center “Riga Pupil’s Palace”(RSP) can be traced back to the autumn of 1940, and it is the first institution in Latvia, which was established with the aim of gathering children for leisure lessons after school.
Today we are one of the largest educational institutions of interest- based education in Latvia. 2583 students aged 3-25 can operate in more than 60 different groups of interests under the leadership of 92 teachers. Young people can draw and paint, work with clay, wood, metal and other materials, singing in ensembles and choirs, dancing international, contemporary and sports dances, learning musical instruments and playing in an orchestra, participating in a variety of individual sports and technical creative groups, learning languages, doing Goji karate, yoga, etc.
This year started with an important event for RSP. On February 29, the opening ceremony of the book “Riga Pupil’s Palace over years” was celebrated. The book includes facts of history for 80 years, recording four-generation memory stories. It answers the phenomenon why, for many years, educators, employees, children, young people and their parents remember what they had witnessed and returns to visit The Palace again and again. The book reflects how the obtained knowledge helped someone choose a profession, reinforced character, provided an incentive for future life. The author of the book project is Inara Jankovska.
In the spring, face-to-face classes in Latvian schools were banned and part of our teachers learned to engage students in distance learning using Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Watsapp communication.
During this time, teachers developed new approaches to teaching methods and developed methodological works that others can also apply in their pedagogical activities. One of the most successful this year is Ligita Kander’s methodological material “Living Language” (“Lebendige Sprache”), which shows how you can make the language learning process interesting for children by learning it through games and in various everyday situations. In this methodological work, the author links language learning with the theme “My Street” in order to be interested in learning more about the place where we live, get to know the history of our city, look up and see how beautiful Riga is!
Christmas is coming and there is continuing to be activity in Riga’s Pupil’s Palace, as our teachers continue to take classes with students individually and remotely. You can follow us: https://www.rsp.lv/ and https://www.facebook.com/BjcRigasSkolenuPils