As a school, we wanted to acquire greater methodological competence in terms of the possibility of creating relaxation in everyday teaching. The teachers should be put in a position where they can create relaxation, set sequences in the lessons in which the students can achieve an improved sense of self by raising awareness of their own history. Through these new methods, the students' self-confidence should be strengthened and they should be shown ways to experience and question their consciousness. This should lead to good mental hygiene for both students and teachers. The teachers' knowledge of English should be improved so that they feel more confident and can create better English lessons by gaining competence. Knowledge of the Italian school system should be increased. An understanding of the difficulties that arise when transferring to the German school system should be gained so that we are better able to provide targeted support.
As a school, we have found that we have to face particular new challenges that are increasingly influencing our work in the classroom. We wanted to counter the demands of ever larger classes and the danger of excessive demands on students and teachers. To do this, we felt it was necessary to develop a repertoire of relaxation methods and consciousness-expanding elements so that we could meet the special emotional needs of our students (we are a special school for emotional and social development) in this situation. Since we work in a class teacher system, all teachers also teach outside the subject area. Here it seemed important to us to get further training, especially in English, in order to be able to design more qualified lessons. We have noticed that more Italian (Sicilian) children attend our school. In order to better understand the special cultural characteristics the language and to be able to meet the special needs of these children and families, we wanted to get to know these characteristics and the Italian school system better.