Climate Change & Sustainability Erasmus Project

Project Title

Climate Change & Sustainability

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: Environment and climate change; Energy and resources; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Climate change, sustainability and the development towards a circular economy will be major issues throughout Europe. Those topics have a major impact in the coming decades. There are huge differences between the German and the Dutch policies. Despite the differences, these topics do not stop at a national border but must be seen in a larger EU and world perspective. Despite the different approaches, the topics have impact on the students of the Alfrink College (NL), the Albert Einstein Gymnasium (DE) and the Gymnasium Ernestinum (DE). By this reason, they want the students to become acquainted with the themes of sustainability and the circular economy.

The partnership was chosen because of the fact that the Alfrink College is an Unesco School, the Gymnasium Ernestinum is an Unicef School and the Albert Einstein Gymnasium is a ‘Europa Schule’. The three schools share the goal to focus on international cooperation and solidarity and all three schools aim to integrate global issues such as human rights and sustainability in the curriculum and make it an integral part of school policy. The three schools can learn from each other because besides the fact that they share a similar international profile (Unesco/Europa Schule), they also bring their own expertise to the project: Alfrink College is a laptop school and has made major progress with digital learning, the Albert Einstein has an expertise in the beta courses and Ernestinum Gymnasium is an ‘environmental school’ and has had experience with several projects in that field. Besides learning from eachother, they also strengthen their international profile as Unesco or Europa schule. The topic we want to focus on is climate change, sustainability and the development towards a circular economy, because this topic gives us the possibility to use the strengths from each school and create the best opportunity for shared learning.

In summary, there are multiple objectives, namely creating awareness by the 160 pupils, the stimulus of reflecting on important topics, create interest for beta courses, digital learningand out of the box thinking. These goals are achieved during the six short-term exchanges. During this exchange, the students work on a mutual project. This project will be carried out by using the Design Thinking Strategy as a methodology. A workshop will take place before this method can be used by the pupils. The workshop informs the pupils about this method. On this manner, the pupils can use this method during working on the project. The strategy contains five phases: emphasize, define, ideate, prototype and test. The first three phases are elements of the first exchange (to NL). The last two are elements of the second exchange (to DE).

Results are among other things:
– Pupils can participate in a fluent and spontaneous conversation and can explain and support their views (in English).
– Due to the exchange, pupils (who consciously opted for bilingual education) think in a broader perspective than just thinking local, regional of national.
– The interest of pupils in technology, maths, science and engineering is increased.
– The schools will implement practices (which they have seen during the exchanges) which contributes to the local sustainability and environment.
– The levels of achievement in the beta courses are improved.

The participation in this project will, in long-term, develop the involved pupils and teachers in having rich knowledge about different policies, languages and the topics of climate change, circular economy and sustainability. Long term benefits are also the solutions for the problems in climate change and sustainability. Both in the local area of the pupils and the schools, as in a wider area when pupils choose for these kinds of topics in a further education or job.
Finally and last but not least we want to use the project to benefit form each others expertise.
– At Alfrink College there will be a workshop about digital learning and the students and teachers will learn with a digital learning tool that is used (Spark). Togethere we will create lessons about the project on Spark, in order for the German schools to bring that expertise home.
– At Ernestinum there will be workshops about the environment linking this to the local environment to the project, so that the other schools learn how to implement this in future projects.
– At Albert Einstein there will be different science workshops where beta sciences are used to let the students do little experiments. The other schools can learn from this and integrate it in future projects.
The final product of the project will be more than the some of student exchanges and students learning. The end product will be an integrated project on the Spark platform that includes the environmental and beta expertise from the schools. The students will share the experiences with each other, so this knowledge will also be integrated in the three schools after the project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 88000 Eur

Project Coordinator

Alfrink College & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Albert-Einstein-Gymnasium
• Gymnasium Ernestinum Rinteln