The main stated goal: the empowerment of students and teachers as well as the drive to reduce the mismatch between education and the professions field. A learning experience abroad increases the self-esteem of the participants and amplifies their chances on the labour market through professionalization. The issues at work that participants would be concerned with: “How do I see a career spanning 45 years? What social contribution does my work make? How do I combine work and family?” stopped due to the coronavirus. The economic and educational break raised other questions of meaning; in IKSO answered with the Kaizen principle by preserving hope and belief in new opportunities, rolling out digital teaching systems, stimulating work attitudes. Thereby, the 'change to better approach’ worked on the resilience of the school population. We now conclude that the “IKSO = school in the world” leg has actively contributed to strengthening the well-being of teachers and students during and after the pandemic. Thanks to the extension of the project, participants could again cross the border (including their own border) in 2022. This mobility reinforced their assumption that crises, tackled together in Europe, are manageable.
The Institute for Catholic Secondary Education in Hoeselt is a secondary school for technical and vocational secondary education. In the realization of the Modernization of Secondary Education, the plan grew to transform our labour market-oriented directions into an educational centre where students, who often belong to disadvantaged groups, would be strengthened in their professional competences. Through the Japanese system Kaizen, to implement innovations in business processes, IKSO and its internationalization team try to work on this transition in small steps. Kaizen literally means 'to change for the better'. In our application we stated that this would also represent a challenge at European level to reflect on the role that work would play in the lives of students and teachers. Four weeks of internship in local companies and schools would introduce them to a corporate culture that is dissimilar from the Flemish one. However, our plan turned out completely different. The mix of existential questions that the participants would be confronted with from the work experiences in the project, but especially in the future, was given a completely unexpected interpretation by corona.