The Way of St James Erasmus Project

Project Title

The Way of St James

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

The context of this project is that the Way of St James pilgrimage is a network of ancient and modern routes that links nearly 10 European countries that share a common cultural background, in this project we aimed to link 4 of those European countries and work together to achieve a common goal, to walk the last 100 km of the pilgrimage together from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela in 5 days. Despite the fact that The Way has a strong Christian background, we considered it is also a space of reunion, regardless of religion beliefs.

The project objectives that we aimed to achieve were to promote social and educational values in the context of the European Year of Cultural Heritage by working together for two years. We developed academic, physical and emotional activities that in our opinion, empowered our students in achieving the common goal of working on different aspects related to the Way of St James.

In order to achieve that, we planned a series of activities that took place or were going to take place over the 2 years of the project. Some took place as projected and unfortunately, a few could not take place because of the COVID-19 crisis that affected the whole world. The activities that took place in the first years were the Teachers Training meeting in the UK, where teachers from the 4 partner schools learnt about: the essential kit for a pilgrimage, First Aid and walking equipment. During the first year we set up our groups of students and we started in each school the fitness, wellbeing, and music training. It was also during this first year that a trip to Spain and Netherlands took place where the Erasmus+ students met each other for the first time as well as their teachers. During this mobility the teams had 2 practice walks and learnt more about First Aid, how to look after each other and how to prepare physically and emotionally for a long walk. More information about this will be shared in more detail in the final report and evidence can be found on Twinspace
During the first and second year each team chose a charity to raise money to. Each team chose a charity whose cause and values were closed to their hearts and it was during the second year that each team started planning how to raise awareness and funds for their chosen charity.

The concrete skills our students and staff developed were leadership, teamwork, self-motivation, communication, confidence, consideration and the ability to learn. This project fostered gender equality, and non-discrimination and social inclusion through education and training activities by showing that the Waym of St James is a place where people meet regardless of their gender, race, social background, religion or economic means.
Even though our final mobility could not take place due to global pandemic, we still provided opportunities for our students to live exceptional cultural exchanges, to have the opportunity to meet new people, learn or improve a language and experience first-hand other European ways of life to return home enriched with knowledge about the environment and themselves.

Concrete results achieved for our staff professional development: we trained together from all different disciplines to strengthen our profiles of teaching expertise. We integrated strategic planning of professional development in line with individual needs and organisational objectives. Our shared objective was innovative in teaching methods and pedagogy by the effective use of digital technologies available, we developed a more modern, dynamic environment inside organisations that provided a student-centred approach.

Concret results achieved for students were students aspiring a higher level of self-acceptance and well-being. As well as fostering critical thinking especially through subjects like PSHE, languages, RE and PE in order to become aware of the need to respect our environment for future generations and the cultural heritage in Europe. In MFL, our objective is to improve skills and competences as a mean of communication when working together online and mobilities. Another objective was to promote among our students entrepreneurship education, in activities like fundraising to support a charity project, all that while reinforcing cooperation with our Erasmus+ partners and other fields of social integration via the charity project. We always promoted among students a culture of physical and mental well-being and fostered entrepreneurial thinking and to create a feeling of all being responsible for each other. And finally, we increased the quality in the implementation and follow-up of a former EU project (i.e. our previous EU funded project “European Classroom” http://www.europeanclassroom.eu/)

Project Website

http://www.europeanclassroom.eu/subjects/all-projects/?pid=28&tx_ecprojects_projectlisting%5Baction%5D=show&tx_ecprojects_projectlisting%5Bcontroller%5D=Project&tx_ecprojects_projectlisting%5Bproject%5D=25&cHash=57cb2426772253cad28030d627aab8c0

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 65253,8 Eur

Project Coordinator

Alderley Edge School for Girls & Country: UK

Project Partners

• IES FRANCISCO FIGUERAS PACHECO
• Jac.P.Thijsse College
• Groupe scolaire Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle