Watch And Learn: Improve Together Erasmus Project

Project Title

Watch And Learn: Improve Together

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Migrants’ issues; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Gender equality / equal opportunities

Project Summary

We live in difficult economic times, in a region that has been struck by massive unemployment. The descendants of the immigrants who once came to Genk to work in the coalmines and once dreamt of returning to their country of origin, are facing different problems than their parents once were.

Our school is situated close to the city centre of Genk, a village that was once a mining village. Our pupils often live in poverty and mainly have a migration background. They work on the side to support their family. They lack motivation and often drop out of school early without the necessary skills to do well on the job market. The last few years not only migrant children are facing difficulties, also the refugees with often traumatic backgrounds enter our schools and ask for special approaches we sometimes do not feel equipped for.

We are trying to formulate an answer to these changing conditions, by trying to find ways on the one hand to enhance their motivation but at the same time also increase their chances on the job market and in their personal life.

The endless informal conversations during our KA1-projects always boiled down to the same subject: How can we work on these equal opportunities? This is what led to this project we all agreed on so unanimously.
Let’s learn from eachother, we have so many good things to share and to learn, let’s find a way to systematically watch and learn.

This project aims on a teacher level at enhancing our knowledge of the mechanisms behind deprivation in different ways and trying to learn from others to improve our own skills and structures to be better equipped to keep combatting the lack of opportunities for certain students groups.

Teachers will collect information about the different school systems and structures by visiting the different schools and find answers to some very specific questions that are linked to failure in education with vulnerable groups.

Also at a student level, we focus on improving their insight in factors that create disadvantage from the very beginning and on finding ways to fight these influential items and beat them on the way.
Students will work on these subjects and collect knowledge during student meetings in the different partner schools.

Students will not only act as evaluators of the programmes/workshops we will watch and come across in different schools. They will also improve their own motivation and self-image, and in the long way by travelling and meeting people from other cultures and other social levels they will create their own ‘equal’ opportunities and create this bigger European awareness in their mind and in our school. Students will feel better equipped and teachers will come home with lots of ideas which we will try out at home and implement in the future.

Per country 2 teachers and 5 students will be travelling. Students will be between 14 and 18 years old and will have to apply to participate in the project. Students from minority groups or refugees will get special attention in this selection process.Of course more teachers and students will be involved in our home countries and the subjects will be worked on within the normal curriculum of the students to get a bigger impact. Also external partners as representatives of the city hall and members of our board of education will be involved.

Our German partner brings a lot of experience to this project in coaching refugees. Via them we met our Spanish partners whom we connected with immediately because we recognized the same struggles. They are mainly working with Roma minorities as the French school who they advised us to contact because of the school profile and the motivated coordinator. And they were proven right, we are a very compatible team: not only in terms of school profiles (very different but also so alike in the problems we face) but also in terms of teacher teams who think alike and have the same aim:more opportunities for all our students!

This project is not only about working together for 2 years, it is about creating a web of connections between several partners, European or not that will last far beyond this project and in itself create other opportunities again with just one goal: to offer a chance of success to ALL our kids.

We hope the steps we take will encourage even more teachers and students in our schools and beyond to take a leap and give it a shot!

‘If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try’ (Seth Godin)

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 87598 Eur

Project Coordinator

GO! Campus Genk Technisch Atheneum De Wijzer & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Regionales Berufsbildungszentrum des Kreises Steinburg AöR.
• IES GRAN VIA
• COLLEGE AMPERE