The importance of Europe as habitat and working place is significant, however it is still not omnipresent in societies mind and is not "experienced" with awareness. Therefore, Europe should not only be a term, it should rather be a feeling and a place of living. In order to give Europe the mentioned meaning, various conditions have to be fulfilled, such as cultural exchanges and mutual understanding among European citizens through the discovery of their cultures. Therefore, European teachers should use their professional potential and their social and educational proximity to (adolescent) members of society and promote the importance of Europe as a fusion point of diverse cultures and its advantages. Referring to the significance of exchange, we see Europe as a great opportunity to strengthen the European cooperation and increase awareness in European identity and European issues, to support the professional development of our teachers, provide them with stronger competences, examine educational applications and policies in different countries, create more dynamic and effective learning environments for our students by increasing the motivation and professional satisfaction of our teachers and increase the competitiveness of our school in the international environment. With this project, we want to promote education of foreign languages and cultures, share experiences and successful methodologies in teaching practices and and facilitate cultural exchanges between centers. Furthermore, it is significant to discover and understand the different European realities through thematic cultural workshops and the field of study specialty of each center and to generate direct contacts between Vocational Training Centers of different European countries. The main goal of this project forms the understanding that the comprehension of European diversity enriches its people by facilitating a better global vision of an increasingly complex world. We aim to provide teachers taking part in the project with a variety of methods and ideas (foreign-language competences, communication competences, intercultural competences, media (digital) competences, international mobility and professional competences) as well as how to embed these in the curricula and build a strategic platform for development and exchange of materials in the future. The participating teachers should work as multipliers. They have to communicate new approaches of methods in professional conferences to the whole staff. Therefore, colleagues from all countries will work together and also experience jointly from the different points of view. Project members are the following: -Paul-Julius-Reuter-Berufskolleg für Wirtschaft und Verwaltung der StädteRegion Aachen -Kouvolan kaupunki (City of Kouvola) -CIPFP Mislata -Etiler Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi -Liceul Atanasie Marienescu Lipova Mobility to Finland - media/digital competences - Informatics, data processing, teachers, and also teachers with different subjects Mobility to Spain - international mobility competences - teachers with different subjects Mobility to Turkey - intercultural competences - politics, teachers with social subjects Mobility to Germany - foreign language competences - English and foreign language teachers; also teachers with different subjects Mobility to Romania - communication competence - politics, teacher with social subject, consulting teachers and also teachers with different subjects The selected team of volunteer teachers will prepare, carry out and post-process the mobility referring to the mentioned competence areas. Each hosting partner will select the team responsible for the mentioned competence areas as organizer and participant. This team should prepare the mobilities with a SWOT analysis, examine the curricula, make an analysis on the state of expectations and determine the expectation horizon concerning the competence area. During the mobilities the participating teachers will get an insight into different teaching methods by work shadowing, learn and select relevant and new methods in a workshop as well as try them out by giving a lesson at the host partner school. The team will evaluate the visit, select new methods, share these with teachers and school organisations, implement the gained aspects in the curricula and exchange new developed materials via platforms and networks. Each hosting partner will select a team responsible for the mentioned competence areas as organizer and participant. This team will examine their curricula, make an analysis on the state of expectations and determine the expectation horizon of the hosting organisation. They will get all the expectation horizons of the partners to plan the visits (content of the workshops, choice of classes for work shadowing and giving lessons).
In order to give Europe the mentioned meaning, various conditions have to be fulfilled, such as cultural exchanges and mutual understanding among European citizens through the discovery of their cultures. Therefore, European teachers should use their professional potential and their social and educational proximity to (adolescent) members of society and promote the importance of Europe as a fusion point of diverse cultures and its advantages. Referring to the significance of exchange, we saw Europe as a great opportunity to strengthen the European cooperation and increase awareness in European identity and European issues, to support the professional development of our teachers, provide them with stronger competences, examine educational applications and policies in different countries, create more dynamic and effective learning environments for our students by increasing the motivation and professional satisfaction of our teachers and increase the competitiveness of our school in the international environment. With this project, we wanted to promote education of foreign languages and cultures, shared experiences and successful methodologies in teaching practices and facilitated cultural exchanges between centers. Furthermore, it was significant to discover and understand the different European realities through thematic cultural workshops and the field of study specialty of each center and to generate direct contacts between Vocational Training Centers of different European countries. The main goal of this project has formed the understanding that the comprehension of European diversity enriches its people by facilitating a better global vision of an increasingly complex world. We aimed to provide teachers taking part in the project with a variety of methods and ideas (foreign-language competences, communication competences, intercultural competences, media (digital) competences, international mobility and professional competences) as well as how to embed these in the curricula and build a strategic platform for development and exchange of materials in the future. The participating teachers worked as multipliers. They communicated new approaches of methods in professional conferences to the whole staff. Therefore, colleagues from all countries worked together and also experienced jointly from the different points of view. The project members were and still are the following: -Paul-Julius-Reuter-Berufskolleg für Wirtschaft und Verwaltung der StädteRegion Aachen -Kouvolan kaupunki (City of Kouvola) -CIPFP Mislata -Etiler Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi -Liceul Atanasie Marienescu Lipova All the partner organisation had a coordinator team for the whole project. Teachers from different subjects took part in the project concerning the competence areas. Due to Covid 19 we had changed the meetings in Romania and Germany to digital meetings. Therefor we had the possibility to invite more teachers and students to this meetings. The stundents had the possibilitiy to take part in the project as master class members or as experts.In all countries students (full classes) were involved as master classes in lessons. This classes were used for job shadowwing (how to teach at the partner school) and teaching a foreign class Mobility to Finland - media/digital competences - Informatics, data processing, teachers, foreign language teachers and the country coordinator Mobility to Spain - international mobility competences - foreign language-, subject teaachers and the country coordinator Mobility to Turkey - intercultural competences - foreign language-, subject teachers and the country coordinator Digital mobility to Romania - communication competence - foreign language-, subject teachers and the country coordinator Digital mobility to Germany - foreign language competences - foreign language-, subject teachers, external moderator, and the coordinators and teachers as supporters due the host organisator The selected team of volunteer teachers prepared, carry out and post-process the mobility (real and digital) referring to the mentioned competence areas. This teams prepared the mobilities by a SWOT analysis, examine the curricula, make an analysis on the state of expectations and determine the expectation horizon concerning the competence area. During the mobilities the participating teachers got an insight into different teaching methods by work shadowing, learn and select relevant and new methods in a workshop as well trying them out by giving a lesson at the receiving partner school and having an exchange with teachers of the partner organisations. The team evaluated the visit, selected relevant new methods, shared this with teachers and school organisations, implement the gained aspects in the curricula and exchange new developed materials via platforms and networks. Through this project, the motivation and willingness of the partners in future projects and activities is very high.