From 2016 to 2018, four schools - Germany, Sweden, Portugal and Finland - jointly carried out an Erasmus+ project with the theme "Comparative studies for individual support and digital competence". The cooperation between the schools proved to be very good, successful and pleasant. At the last meeting of the coordinating teachers, the participants decided to plan a new joint project on sustainability. In view of the climate change that can now be increasingly observed, everyone felt that this topic was urgent and cross-national. In the meantime, the Finnish school has joined another Erasmus+ project group. The three other schools decided to take a fourth school on board again. The Italian school, which had already taken part in many Erasmus+ projects, showed interest in the topic and joined the project group. This is considered an enrichment by all. So the four European schools have set themselves the goal of collectively addressing the issue of education for sustainability as a crosscurricular topic. Our main objectives are to make our students aware of their environment and the climate change. Teachers and everybody working at school have to take social and environmental responsibility. We want our students to become aware of environmental issues. We also want to raise the awareness their parents and the local communitiy about the importance to take care of our planet earth. It's our duty to encourage the young people to behave responsible and be proactive with nature. Not only our students but all people belonging to our school environment should understand how important the planned activities are. Other goals are the development of personal competences among the pupils and the continuation of the goal of the last project. This was the expansion of digital competences. Another key objective is to meet young people from other European countries. Through these encounters, the European idea, the importance of the European Union and friendship are spread across national borders. At every school Erasmus+groups will be established. In these groups there will be about 18 - 20 students per school. They will meet regularly with Erasmus+ teachers to discuss sustainability, identify regional environmental issues, plan activities and take part in mobilities to exchange ideas. The confrontation with our project title sustainability is to be worked on by all those involved in school life and by extracurricular groups as an superordinate topic. This is the only way to achieve long-term results. During the project phase and beyond, the topic of sustainability is dealt with in various subjects. The teachers of natural sciences, social sciences, nutrition, technology, computer science and English are particularly in demand. Theoretical and practical approaches are initiated in the lessons. The following methods and approaches are mentioned here as examples of our project work: Interwiews, discussions, experiments, evaluation of results, graphical representations, use of digital tools, presentation techniques, communication in the foreign language English. As an overall result we see the reduction of the ecological footprint of our schools. In concrete terms, this means that after taking inventory of school and regional problem areas we want to reduce or eliminate the problem. Here the activities reuse, reduce and reecyling are of particular importance. At the transnational meetings, activities are implemented that are exemplary for dealing with environmental problems. For example at the meeting in Portugal: collecting garbage on the beach, separating the garbage, recognising recyclable raw materials, putting up signs with tips on how to avoid garbage on the beach, summarize the activities, record results and process them so that they can be presented to others. As a joint result, we want to create a digital and a handmade handbook on sustainability in order to present our work to other schools and motivate them to imitate it. We hope that this will have a positive impact on our students in terms of increased environmental awareness and responsibility for this planet. Other impacts will be that students will be able to develop and implement personal competences such as self-confidence, responsibility, endurance, communication skills and digital competences in relation to lifelong learning. There will be several long-term benefits from the Erasmus+ project: - The development of a spiral curriculum on sustainability that will assign themes and activities to different subjects and grades. - The further cooperation with environmental groups and thus the deeper anchoring of the school in the community. - The awareness of pupils that it is a transnational issue and therefore the exchange between nations is necessary. - The solidarity with the participating countries and thus the further consideration of their problems and solutions. - Feeling the European idea and the importance of the European Union.
Four European schools have set themselves the goal of collectively addressing the issue of education for sustainability as a cross curricular topic. Our main objectives were to make our students aware of their environment and the climate change. Also, the development of the pupils` personal skills was a core goal for the coordinators. This included the expansion of digital competences, meeting young people from other European countries and thus strengthening their self-confidence. The encounters successfully reduced the concerns about unknown things and countries and led to a strong bonding experience between European countries, establishing a deeper understanding of each other and forming friendships across the European Union. The involvement of students among different age groups and their families, the participation of teachers of various subjects and fields, and the work with local partners contributed to a wide reach of this project and made long term effects possible. The topic “sustainability” was a superordinate topic and therefore is was discussed in many different contexts. The teachers of natural sciences, social sciences, nutrition, technology, computer science included it in their everyday lessons and the results were made easily accessible for everyone interested in the topic (posters, displays, flyers, homepage,…). The project was even made available for people outside the schools. The schools initiated events such as the beach clean-up or the river cleaning which were received with great interest by bystanders. Those events raised awareness and made people talk about the importance of sustainability. Additionally, these activities were published in the newspapers and on the homepages of the schools and the project homepage, reaching an even wider readership. To provide a holistic picture of sustainability for the students, the theoretical and practical approaches were combined in the project meetings. The students used methods and skills like: interviews, discussions, experiments, evaluation of results, graphical representations, use of digital tools, presentation techniques, and communication in the foreign language English. This set of skills was necessary to accomplish the project activities and it will also be a long-term benefit for them on a personal basis. Many of the activities were done in different partnering countries to different times and it was interesting to compare the results. The main activities however took place when the four contributing countries met. Here the focus was on the topics: reuse, reduce and recycling. As planned the transnational meetings dealt with different environmental problems and matching activities. The main focus in the encounter in Sweden was on understanding the recycling system and processes of a waste disposal centre. Additionally, the importance of food waste was discussed and a campaign to stop food waste was initiated by the students at the school. The results of this joint activity between four countries were brought back home to each individual country and distributed in the home schools. In Portugal the emphasis was on the topic life at the beach and how to protect the wildlife there. Starting with theoretical approaches and information about wildlife enriched the knowledge of the students leading to a high motivation to actively prevent waste from getting into the oceans. Therefore, clean ups took place, reducing the danger of marine wildlife to suffer from human pollution. During the meeting in Germany all activities were based around the topic “upcycling”, giving old and seemingly unusable objects a second life. Sewing bags made of old movie posters or folding outdated maps to use them as envelopes made students realize that there are alternatives to buying new proucts and that creativity has no limits. The meeting in Italy was the final meeting of this project and therefore also a summary of everything we had achieved prior. The students revised everything they learned within the last 3 years of this project together and turned their broad knowledge into short movies about individual environmental topics. They were encouraged to share the results with their friends and peers in order to increase the awareness for sustainability and responsibility for this planet among a young audience. As a long-lasting dissemination of our project we created a digital homepage as well as a short handbook on sustainability in order to present our work to other schools and motivate them to imitate a more sustainable approach. For further information please feel free to check and reference our homepage: https://steps-erasmus-ka2.weebly.com/