Be smart, be healthy, be Europe! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Be smart, be healthy, be 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 : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project Summary

Methods:
Before all mobility meetings our international Erasmus team created student surveys concerning our four main areas to figure out specific needs and problems in advance. Additionally, the students created dedicated presentations and videos. During the actual mobility meetings students and teachers intensively discussed all results to achieve specific solutions for all schools.
Results:
The goals we had initially set for the sustainable improvement of the status quo in the four core areas were largely achieved. With regard to “Physical activity”, we created “Energizer videos” to instruct our colleagues. By this means, all schools have integrated active teaching phases into their teaching methods. In addition, specialized literature on active teaching was made available to all colleagues. Active education will thus remain integrated at all schools sustainably. All participating schools have also improved their framework conditions for active breaks. They purchased sports materials in order to encourage the students to be more active during breaks. Since the international schools found different local conditions (e.g. lack of storage space at the German school), they partially took individual measures, such as the construction of an “Erasmus container” for the rental of sports equipment. A large number of students designed the outer facade of the container with our Erasmus logo in a graffiti workshop to make the project visible to everyone.
Concerning the area “nutrition,” the Erasmus team developed measures to ensure healthy diet at schools. Surveys showed that the majority of our students, regardless of nationality, were consuming convenience foods. Fresh meals were rarely prepared in their own families. For this reason, we visited a family-run olive oil factory in Sicily: The students learned about the production process of a food they knew and developed an increased appreciation for the natural product. Parts of the olive oil obtained were also used to make soap in the school lab. The students learned to appreciate the variety of this natural product. This process was already implemented at our schools in chemistry lessons on the subject of esterification. During the project, our team was able to optimise the food supply in the refectories by increasing the use of regional products and improving quality in general. Salad bars were introduced, meat supply was reduced and the quantity of sugar and salty snacks at school was kiosks restricted.
In terms of “hygiene” we worked on the goal of questioning one’s own hygienic behaviour at schools, presenting existing concepts to each other and, if necessary, optimising them. A survey on personal hygiene behaviour of the students was conducted in advance. It turned out that many students complained about the hygienic conditions at their school toilets and we decided to focus on this matter: The students created informative, thought-provoking hygiene videos that dealt with both right and wrong behaviour. Besides, we designed special signs in order to sensitize students to the necessity of correct hand washing. These signs are installed in all school toilets.
The improvement of everyday school life in the area of “personal environment” turned out to be difficult. Originally planned issues such as the installation of recreation rooms for teachers and students failed due to fire protection conditions at schools or specifications of the school management. A matter both students and teachers complained about in a dedicated survey was the large amount of waste left in the schoolyards. In order to encourage all students to put their waste in the garbage cans instead of in the schoolyard, the students designed eye-catching stickers and stuck them directly onto them. During the mobility meetings, we carried out activities such as cleaning the environment and designing flowers from the collected garbage. Such actions will be maintained at schools in the future. Smoking turned out to be another major problem at the schools. For this purpose, we created iconic signs to inform about the risks of smoking and environmental pollution.
The measures taken during the project will be continued at every school in consultation with the school administration to further improve everyday school life.
In terms of dissemination, we would like to make our results and experiences available to all schools in Europe. Therefore, the Erasmus team developed a project homepage, which provides a detailed impression of our experiences and results. All partners distributed the link (www.bit.ly/PlusErasmus) via the social networks. It can also be found on e-twinning. We hope that we can also encourage other schools to focus more on the health of the school community (pupils, teachers as well as parents).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 79695 Eur

Project Coordinator

Bertha-von-Suttner-Gesamtschule der Stadt Dormagen & Country: DE

Project Partners

• IIS “F.Redi”
• Eitminiskiu gimnazija
• EPLEFPA BORGO LA MARANA