Firstly, we wanted to achieve a higher level of CLIL teaching at our school to support our international orientation and bilingual education. Being more CLIL-minded as teachers allows us to improve our capacity to pass on our subject knowledge in English and improves the level of English of our bilingual students. Connected to this we wanted to create opportunities for our bilingual staff to improve their English by attending English language courses and by stimulating them to attend international conferences to practise their English in a real-world setting. Finally we wanted our staff to attend courses to improve their Project Based- Learning skills in order to design high quality projects. In summary, we wanted to achieve a higher level of capability of our staff in aforementioned areas to maximise what we can teach our students in order to prepare them to be able to function in an international society.
Our main goal in applying for this project was to help our teachers find new ways to stimulate students to find, create, and sustain connections in an ever-changing and international society. Improving intercultural cooperation and communication are key components of our school policy and we needed our staff to be able to provide a good example. We also started implementing Project Based Learning in 2019 and felt we had a few clear needs in order to make this, as well as a high level of bilingual education, successful and effective. Since we struggled with the homogenic background of our students and staff, there was a clear need to further develop their ability to understand and adjust to different cultural perspectives and to transfer that to our students.