Responsibility for one´s own life, responsibility for one´s environment and Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Responsibility for one´s own life, responsibility for one´s environment and Europe

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Project summary
Besides teaching and learning, personality development is probably the central task of our educational system. What resources do we want to give our students for their future lives? How do we live and learn today and how will we live and learn tomorrow? How do we exemplify, convey and implement values in everyday life?
These are the central questions. With our project “Responsibility for ourselves – Responsibility for our environment and Europe” we would like to make a contribution to these very topics.
People, especially young ones, are increasingly confronted with the question of who they are. The process of finding an identity, with the aim of creating a stable self-image, is also associated with crises that need to be overcome. We would like to support young people’s assessment of their current situation in a world which in its complexity often causes confusion and disorientation. The “tool” we use for this is “The Leader in Me” (LIM) by Stephen Covey. All project partners use this personality development program in their schools. With this program, students learn to take their lives into their own hands in order to gain more self-confidence, increase teamwork skills and improve their school performance. Self-initiative, actively and creatively shaping one’s own life and cooperation are also part of this. Through project-oriented, intercultural learning there will be a lively exchange of ideas on these issues over a total period of three years. The question “How do I take responsibility for my life, my environment and Europe?” will be considered from different perspectives. In addition to the personal question about the individual life path, the students’ own lives are to be placed in the context of European citizenship. When we talk about responsibility, the environmental aspect is of course more topical than ever.
The aim is to develop new ideas for implementing LIM in the form of step-by-step strategies. The “annual topics” we are going to deal with in the project are “WinWin Europe” and a responsible approach to “digitalization” and the “environment”. These topics are developed in various subjects and classes at the schools concerned. The short-term exchanges between the groups of pupils create an intercultural working community, enable a transfer of knowledge and promote the acquisition of foreign languages; together, groups of pupils continue to work on the topics. The planned exchange meetings, in which five to eight pupils from each partner school take part, serve to exchange preparatory thoughts on the annual topic and thus to be inspired for the implementation in their own schools as well as to discuss the final results. The pupils involved attend secondary school.
A special feature of this project is the long-term mobility. Three pupils from BG/BRG Fürstenfeld will have the opportunity to attend the Spanish partner school for two months.
The participating teachers will use their meetings for joint further training, for the further development of the implementation of LIM, for job shadowing and for teaching contributions at the host schools.
We expect the schools to benefit sustainably from the set topics and the different approaches from five EU countries. By dealing intensively with the EU and answering the question of what young people themselves can do for the EU and what they “get” from it, the awareness of a positive basic attitude towards the EU is generated. Through home-schooling in particular, we are currently experiencing how important digitalization is for our contemporary life. This makes it all the more important for young people to find a personal answer to how to use the positive possibilities of digitalization and how to protect oneself against its dangerous aspects. Dealing with our environment is an issue that concerns us all. We want to find out with the pupils in our schools what we can implement proactively in a responsible way at school. It is possible that the topics will provide opportunities for links with the local authorities and regions of the various schools. To be able to verify results, we will work with different methods: from presentation to publication and evaluation.
A total of five schools are involved. The BG/BRG Fürstenfeld, which has been implementing LIM since the 2018/19 school year, participates as an Austrian school. The Czech school Základní škola a Mateřská škola Pohádka has already been working with this programme for six years. In addition to the Spanish private school Colegio Pureza de Maria, the Portuguese private school Centro de Educação Integral is another partner. As the first LIM school in Germany, the Metropolitan International School is also involved in this Erasmus+ project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 207613 Eur

Project Coordinator

BG BRG Fürstenfeld & Country: AT

Project Partners

• Základní škola a Mateřská škola Pohádka
• Pureza de María
• Metropolitan International School
• Centro de Educação Integral