To prepare students for the international world of work, it is important that teachers continue their education throughout Europe. In the curricula of vocational schools, English lessons are increasingly integrated into the subject-specific lessons. Therefore, teachers without a corresponding faculty must also make their teaching more international. To make this possible, we wanted to organize language courses for the teachers. Due to the introduction of teacher and student iPads at our school in 2020, a safe handling of digital media is indispensable. Further training on the topic of digitalization (e.g. Flipped Classroom) is therefore an important part of getting to know new methods and applying them in the classroom. Through job shadowing at other European schools, we wanted to get new ideas for the digital development of our own school. This way, new (digital) work structures can be learned and language affinity can be improved. Erasmus also makes it possible to get to know different cultures. This can strengthen European acceptance and lay the foundation for future projects.
In order to meet our internal school quality goal "We prepare students for the requirements of the international working world", it was important to give the teachers at our school the opportunity to spend time abroad. Through our project, the teachers were able to further their education throughout Europe and incorporate their experiences into their lessons. In the long term, our goal is to make the lessons, the teachers and the students more intercultural. Furthermore, the proportion of our students with a migration background is increasing enormously, and our dual partners in business are expanding their international activities considerably, which is why the teachers need more and more intercultural skills. With the knowledge acquired through Europe-wide training courses, we have given the teachers the opportunity to further their education in other European countries in order to make their subject-specific lessons more varied and intercultural. This cannot be covered by the English teachers alone. Therefore, a confident handling of the English language by all teachers is indispensable. Thus, we were able to meet the development of the internationalization strategy of our school.