Conditions of living and spending free-time have changed drastically for young people. In many respects these changes lead to rather problematic developments in the lifestyles of our students in terms of having negative consequences for their health. In the light of these more or less recent tendencies we have developed the desire to set up and carry out a project that focuses on health: „Our healthy school: How we make students fit for the future.“ Obviously we wanted to include exercise, healthy diet and fitness into the course of our project. In the process of developing the details it quickly became clear that it was important to us to pay particular attention to “mental health”, “internet safety and netiquette”, “healthy environment – Fridays for future” and prevention programmes as well. Our project aims at supporting students to lead a meaningful, healthy life as European citizens, who take active responsibility in their communities and are able to use digital media safely and considerately. After having won schools from the United Kingdom, Latvia, Greece, Sweden and Spain as partners we planned each of our meetings to be focused on one central aspect of health including and complementing general collaborative activities. These aspects are: sports, healthy diet, digital literacy, ethical values, mental health and environment. Five schools will take part in the mobilities with 4 students (ideally two girls and two boys) from grades 4 to 7, who will be accompanied by two teachers. One of the schools will take part with teachers only, this fact is further explained in the application. The participating students are planned to be accommodated by host families. In addition to the attendance of classes they will be assigned with the task of documenting the meetings and uploading their results on our online platform. Aside from the activities in the context of the meetings, participating schools will conduct activities and workshops at their respective schools through the whole course of the project. These will also include collaborations with parents as well as non-school partners. As a school that has a curricular sports programme we have been cooperating with local sports clubs for some time now. Among others these include a rowing and a sailing club as well as a dance and a football club. These partners are willing to offer activities for our students in the context of the project. Beyond that we will also offer activities associated with popular trend sports. We expect that we can show and offer our students health promoting and meaningful alternatives that can replace or complement current free-time habits, which might be considered problematic or unhealthy. Promoting a healthy lifestyle necessarily entails an enhanced focus on prevention programmes. The various stimulations and dangers of digital media and virtual realities influence our students in many different ways especially since teenagers are faced with the pressure of being „always online“. The habits that come with this exposure have a relevant impact on their mental health. We want to react to that by implementing various innovative measures to promote mental health and taking initiatives to strengthen digital literacy. Last but not least we would like to give our students the opportunity to think of themselves as young Europeans in an international community by giving them the chance to take part in workshops and international meetings. We expect that they will be able to learn that people of different cultural background face the same, similar or very different challenges. They will also have the chance to make personal contacts, establish friendships, reduce prejudice and barriers – international and intercultural understanding will grow. For our meetings we plan to make the results of our local projects available and share experience and insights. This way all partners can learn from one another and be inspired by new ideas. Successful activities can be incorporated in the respective school curricula and contribute to the establishment of long-term programmes that lead to school communities that actively promote healthy lifestyles of their students.
Conditions of living and spending free-time have changed drastically for young people. In many respects these changes have lead to rather problematic developments in the lifestyles of our students in terms of having negative consequences for their health. In the light of these more or less recent tendencies we have developed the desire to set up and carry out a project that focuses on health: „Our healthy school: How we make students fit for the future.“ The draft of our project intended to focus especially on physical exercise and healthy nutrition, additionally on e-safety, mental health, and “healthy environment – Fridays for future”. We quickly found interested partners in Greece, Spain, Sweden and the UK. In the preparation of our project it was soon clear that all partners would enter the project with a great deal of enthusiasm and readiness for constructive cooperation. We planned different thematic focuses for each visit to learn from the know-how and experience of our partners. Then the pandemic changed the world as we know it drastically. This also meant that our main objective, supporting students in the development of a healthy lifestyle and understanding themselves as European citizens was put into a new perspective. Sadly, we could not carry out the project as planned. After our first meeting in October 2019 no further mobilities could take place. Nonetheless the idea to promote healthy lifestyles gained importance due to school closings and young people being forced to stay home. All partners worked hard to develop new activities and modify planned ones to face the new realities of our students. The school closings made it necessary to find new ways to encourage students to exercise physically; homeschooling made e-safety more important than ever; the psychological challenges of lockdowns meant that “mental health” had to be considered more intently. And last but not least the closing of European borders, that had long been history, and the global dimension of pandemic-related regulations made it all the more necessary to promote open mindsets and emphasize the importance of international collaboration and the accomplishments as well as present and future perspectives of European cooperation. What is true in a larger sense starts at the basis: with cooperation of single people and institutions. That is why we attached particular importance keeping in touch with our partners, develop new and virtual collaborative activities and enable students to communicate with students from other countries. Activities like “The golden banana challenge”, “Meet your friends” and "Fit For the Future Blog" promoted the direct communication between students. The exchange with our partners was of special importance to us. Regular video calls, messenger-groups and the documentation of activities and results on TwinSpace enabled us to learn and be inspired from one another - yet from a distance. Apart from teaching basic skills of healthy living to our students in all local activities, some of them were carved out to have a larger, more sustainable impact. In the UK, for example, an outdoor learning area was set up over the time period of two years – it is still developing and has become an integral learning area for students and teachers. Many of the activities were drafted with a future perspective and have become part of the curricula. Above all, the main achievement of our project is, that we were able to establish strong partnerships with future perspectives. Thus promoting the identification of single people as well as whole schools as being active participants of a European community. The communication and collaboration between all partners was always very open, supportive and productive. We have already planned more collaborative activities within and without the Erasmus+ program. Although physical travelling was not possible, we were able to intensify the international orientation of all schools due to a 2 year long cooperation. Participants - adults and students alike - gained a new understanding of cooperation with people from other European countries and how it can work naturally. They experienced the importance of constructive relationships and gained a new sense of themselves as Europeans.