It is important for our school that our teaching staff will attend classes along with teachers from other countries, having the opportunity to meet the project partners and to plan school exchanges and cooperate with them. The seminar experience will enhance the motivation for intercultural learning and intercultural cooperation and thus school participation in European programs will be more effective. It will improve the integration of foreign pupils and refugee/immigrant pupils into the school community and will further inspire our teaching staff for European projects, aiming to expand the intercultural, language, and social skills of students. Our pupils will be able to escape the narrow boundaries of our school. 1st GEL will be closer to meeting the demands of the education of the future by providing continuing training and development opportunities to its teachers and the wider local educational community, and by providing its students with learning opportunities adapted to the needs of the 21st century using modern and innovative teaching approaches geared to a European and global educational environment.
The main reason was to train our staff so that our school could meet the challenge of migrant student flows we receive from the Balkan neighboring countries and from areas of the Arab world. Managing a multicultural classroom is a challenge for the modern teacher, therefore new pedagogical and didactic practices must be used.Τhe modern school has to keep up with the social changes to effectively manage multiculturalism reality through intercultural education. This approach to multiculturalism means that individuals of different cultural groups have to cooperate and interact. School staff needs to renew their teaching practices in relation to key competencies (intercultural education, foreign languages, ICT, and development of cross-border partnerships) and develop skills such as high expectations for all student success, commitment to fair treatment of all students and knowledge of handling different ways of learning, solid foundation of multicultural knowledge, the ability to build relationships with students, genuine interest in young people and their problems. Therefore ongoing training of the school staff is essential for a modern inclusive school that addresses the specific features of its students.