The participating schools want to point out exemplarily that a European Community, which pursues mainly economic goals, offers no stability in the long term. The need for Europe as an economic guarantor has no longer sufficient legitimacy due to current global and pan-European political developments. The importance of the European Community for the security of its people and their peaceful coexistence must therefore be given greater prominence. We pursue this with the model "European School" – it can be understood as a "Europe on a small scale", which will explicitly identify a subject "EUROPEAN STUDIES". The encounters and project results should show that national thinking /selfishness do not lead to peaceful coexistence, but create new problems and fears. Educational priorities should be: the inner-school coexistence, conflict management, teamwork and common shaping of the future. Four of the six partners already have experience with European school projects. There is a great desire to extend this experience, as well as the sensitivity for intercultural and ethical business issues. We want to use this as a basis for our model "European School". In addition to the stated goals at the level of the students, we want to refine the "European idea" at our educational institutions. The deepening of this idea in this two-year project is intended to enable each participating school for further projects. Our agenda: Together, we want to find new ways to projectively explore school life and learning in terms of anticipated European challenges as well as to prepare both students and teachers for future needs. The teaching of basic skills (reading, writing, arithmetic) and educational and social skills play a key role at European level. For this purpose we want to analyze and compare the given/existing conditions/realities in our schools. We want to try to anticipate a possible future development and to develop a vision of a school with a European profile. In doing so, we base ourselves on the needs of young people in a global European society and the demands of the future professional world within the European Economic Area. Political developments should also be taken into account, in particular to counteract the emerging populism and xenophobia. With the subject "European Studies", in which common historical values and the common historical heritage will be discussed, we aim to put greater emphasis on the importance of the EU as a peace-promoting Union. (E.g. possible products: mission statement / profile of the school, system of rules, school organigram, house and school regulations, determination of subjects, methodology and didactics, definition of the logo). The project is initiated by the Gebhard-Müller-School (Biberach, Germany), a vocational school with a commercial profile. Our partner schools are: ITET "E. Fermi" (Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, Sicily, Italy); PCVO Nijverdal-Rijssen CSG Reggesteyn (Nijverdal, Netherlands); Agrupamento de Escolas da Maia (Maia, Portugal); 2 Geniko Lykeio Rethymnou (Rethymno, Greece); Borgarskolan Gävle (Gävle, Sweden). The project will involve students between the ages of 15-18 years. All partner schools are active in the upper secondary level. The focus of each school is on general education as well as tourism, finance and marketing administration, information systems, international relationships, environmental and territorial buildings, economics and business management and law. The shared benefits of these international relations should be made tangible, with a focus on long-term cooperation and intercultural exchange. The new intercultural competences that will be acquired in the project, both for the pupils and the teachers, train the ability to act in dealing with pupils from other cultural backgrounds. Both students and teachers become aware of European commonalities and diversities and recognize their value. Through the planned intercultural activities, we are pursuing an extension of the personality development of each participant. The personal competence of the individual that results in a greater flexibility and security in the intercultural approach will – initially - have an impact on the classroom and school climate and - at a later stage - on the participants’ private and professional life.
We pursue with the model of a "European School", the importance of the European Community for the security of its people and their peaceful coexistence. Educational priorities should be: the inner-school coexistence, conflict management, teamwork and common shaping of the future. Together, we wanted to find new ways to projectively explore school life and learning in terms of anticipated European challenges as well as to prepare both students and teachers for future need at school and work life. We have started the project with a questionnaire where we found out that students are very positive at school. Students wand to be prepared for life, they want to use new technology and are totally interested in new learning methods, also in new subjects. We have done a lot of workshops with students from different countries. They discussed about better ways of teaching and found common standards and ideas. We created a platform to exchange current school life. We found many differences but the logo of the European School and the values, which were created by students at the beginning of the project, were always the identity to stick together. In the workshops, we focused on timetables, subjects, roles of teachers and students, on skills and digital movements. As am example, results from the workshop about values were, that students agree on basics as tolerance, respect, freedom, integration, democracy, fairness, honesty, safety, equality. If we are going to build a European School of the Future it is important to have the same European values. The project offers the possibility to get open minded, to accept different ways of living and shows that we are all human being in a European Union but are still all individuals. This expectancy of the values got transparent in daily school life, which is the biggest result and one big goal of Erasmus+, I am proud of. The project was initiated by the Gebhard-Müller-School (Biberach, Germany), a vocational school with a commercial profile. Our partner schools were: ITET "E. Fermi" (Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, Sicily, Italy); PCVO Nijverdal-Rijssen CSG Reggesteyn (Nijverdal, Netherlands); Agrupamento de Escolas da Maia (Maia, Portugal); 2 Geniko Lykeio Rethymnou (Rethymno, Greece); Borgarskolan Gävle (Gävle, Sweden). The project involved students between the ages of 15-18 years. All partner schools are active in the upper secondary level. The focus of each school is on general education as well as tourism, finance and marketing administration, information systems, international relationships, environmental and territorial buildings, economics and business management and law. The shared benefits of these international relations created a long-term cooperation and intercultural exchange for other projects with some partners. The new intercultural competences that were acquired in the project, both for the students and the teachers, train the ability to act in dealing with pupils from other cultural backgrounds. Both students and teachers became aware of European commonalities and diversities and recognize their value. Through the planned intercultural activities, we were pursuing an extension of the personality development of each participant. The personal competence of the individual that results in a greater flexibility and security in the intercultural approach had an impact on the classroom and school climate and on the participants’ private and professional life.