The very foundation of our project is found in the title: “Four C’s for the 21st Century – Curiosity, Cooperation, Communication and Creativity”. Five schools from five EU countries have partnered together to bring about a unique and meaningful project based on these 4 C’s. While three schools (D, ES, NL) know each other as reliable partners from a successfull cooperation in a Comenius project 2013-15, the Italian and the Estonian school take part in a European programme for the first time. All schools have equally participated in the drafting of this project, have profound knowledge and experiences in some areas relevant to the project, and together we are looking forward to learning from each other in this inspiring environment. Each partner country has recognized the need for improvement in preparing students for their professional future. Often, a lack of skills together with poor preparedness, self-reflection, flexibility and minimal market awareness for study and career opportunities limit the economic and social participation of young people. Thus main aim of the project “Four C’s for the 21st Century – Curiosity, Cooperation, Communication and Creativity” for students aged 12 to 16 (years 7 - 10) is to prepare our students for the "world of work" by instilling 21st century skills (the 4 C's) in them, helping them analyse their potential and explore the opportunitities at hand as well as enabling them to "think outside the box" and become creative about future career paths in Europe. With our project, we aim to improve opportunities by producing concrete sustainable tools for young people. Tools they will develop and share in eTwinning projects are methods and knowledge that will support their development of skills and competencies and guide their decision making. Students will get to know methods which they can use (examples: SWOT analysis, rhetorics), gain helpful knowledge (example: teamwork and role assignments in groups), research about jobs and disseminate these helpful tools to others who are in the same situation: Students will create leaflets "How to..." (example: How to analyse your potentials"), write articles about their experience and make creative products, all of which will be published on the project website the eTwinning twinspaces will also be publically accessible. The continued sustainability of "Four C's for the 21st Century" is designed to remain in place for future classes, because the tools created become part of each partner school's standard bundle of tools for preparing young people for important decisions. Each term approximately 20-30 students per school are going to participate in an eTwinning project on one of the four C's. Each eTwinning project is connected to a learning/teaching/training activity in the same term, where some students from all schools can meet and work on the topics in person. The main aspects are: 1st term: CURIOSITY: students get to know the world of work, job and study opportunities in Europe and examine their potentials 2nd term: COOPERATION: students explore soft skills which are vital in 21st century jobs, such as teamwork and self-management 3rd term: COMMUNICATION: students develop a career plan, learn how to write a CV and simulate job interviews 4th term CREATIVITY: students "think outside the box" in order to develop innovative ideas how to tackle 21st century job problems We hope to broaden the experiences of less fortunate pupils, and invest in improving their opportunities for a healthy, happy and fruitful life. Teachers drawn toward this project are motivated life-long-learners who want to learn and evolve themselves, as well as serve the needs of the pupils before them. The very hands on nature of the workshops encourages maximum participation of all and the ability to include a broad variety and number of pupils. Young people who are offered the opportunity to travel abroad with school in a structured programme such as ours will hopefully be inspired, enlightened and will begin to development leadership qualities. We aspire to stimulate the curiosity in young people to travel beyond their own borders, to meet folks not exactly like themselves and to embrace all the lovely things that make us European. We teachers have realized a second need in this context, which is to share best practice and learn from each other innovative cooperative teaching methods, ICT skills, CLIL skills and strategies how to support students in finding their career paths. Thus, this project will also be an excellent space where our schools and staff can share their expertise and learn from each other. At every transnational project meeting and during the learning/training/teaching activitites of the students, teachers will have activities and sessions as well, where we enhance our professional competences.
The project “Four C’s for the 21st Century – Curiosity, Cooperation, Communication and Creativity” 2017 - 2019 has been a strategic partnership by five schools from Germany, Estonia, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. Its main aim was to prepare our students (aged 12 to 16) for the "world of work" by instilling 21st century skills (the 4 Cs) in them, helping them analyse their potential and explore the opportunities at hand as well as enabling them to "think outside the box" and become creative about future career paths in Europe. Furthermore, the project also aimed at improving language and ICT skills and intercultural compencies of the participants. The teachers wanted to learn from each other, train each other in fields their schools have special expertise in and thus contribute to the professionalization of the teachers and their life-long learing process. With our project, we wanted to improve opportunities of the participants by producing concrete sustainable tools for young people. The basis for our work was the eTwinning twinspace, in which we shared methods and results of activities which support our students' development of skills and competencies and guide their decision making. Students got to know methods which they can use (SWOT analysis, rhetorics), gained helpful knowledge (e.g. about going abroad, learning styles), researched about jobs and disseminated these helpful tools to others who are in the same situation. They created leaflets "How to..." ("How to develop soft skills", "Going abroad"), wrote articles about their experience and made creative products, all of which were collected in the eTwinning twinspace. The main results are also accessible on the project webpage. Throughout the two-years project 318 students and 26 teachers worked together in the eTwinning project on the four C's. Each topic of the eTwinning project was connected to a learning/teaching/training activity in the same term, where some students from all schools met and worked on the topics in person. The topics were: CURIOSITY: our students got to know the world of work, job and study opportunities in Europe and examined their potentials COOPERATION: our students explored soft skills which are vital in 21st century jobs, such as teamwork and self-management COMMUNICATION: our students developed a career plan, learned how to write a CV and simulated job interviews CREATIVITY: our students "thought outside the box" by developing innovative ideas how to tackle 21st century job problems Apart from the students who were registered in the twinspace, many more students dealt with the Erasmus+ project and benefitted from the project results. At every learning/teaching/training activity we organised the accommodation in host families, so that the whole school community - brothers, sisters, parents - were involved in the project and experienced intercultural learning situations as well. On the whole, about 2000 persons were affected positively by this project. Based on the feedback we have received by the students, we can say that, on the one hand, the objective was met to open up opportunities for our students to prepare them better for the European world of work and help them identify their strengths, weaknesses and wishes for their future careers. They were also grateful to have gained more knowledge and competencies in the field of soft skills and other competencies required for entering today's job market. On the other hand, the participants also reflected upon their intercultural competencies and realised that they had learned a lot in terms of differences and similarities between students from all over Europe and the intercultural communication between them. We teachers shared best practice and learned from each other innovative cooperative teaching methods, ICT skills and strategies how to support students in finding their career paths. At every transnational project meeting and during the learning/training/teaching activitites of the students, teachers could enhance their professional competences as well. The impact on the schools is two-fold: Firstly, the schools got to know new concepts and contents of career planning and helping students to find their way into the "world of work". Secondly, the participants - both teachers and students - gained intercultural competencies, broadened their horizons and enjoyed the European contacts and international atmosphere within the project. Thus, the participants and the five European schools will benefit from the impact this project has had on their lives. All schools published articles about their activities on their homepages, presented the project during Open Days and at public school events and regularly up-dated the information in their Erasmus+ Corner. Furthermore, the local press published articles about some of the activities. The results were all gathered in the eTwinning twinspace - which in parts is public - and on the project webpage.