Through our collaboration with our partner school, we wanted to give our teachers the opportunity to establish contacts with teachers and school management and open up the possibility of discussions and collaborations in a number of different areas. Our goal was that the project would lead to more skilled and more aware teachers who gained increased knowledge and experience from an exchange with our partner school in Germany. This was part of a development work that we hoped would lead to higher motivation among the students, a development of how we plan and carry out the work with workplace-based learning, greater competence in working with newly arrived students and increased understanding of people's differences and the importance of working towards xenophobia and for democratic values and the equal value of all people. In the extension, we also saw that work with internationalization also on vocational programs could lead to a more positive image of vocational programs and increase the attractiveness.
Various Erasmus+ projects have been run at our school for many years. When our last project that we had in collaboration with SBSZ Jena Göschwitz ended, we saw a variety of benefits and gains for the teachers who had been part of the project. We had good cooperation with the partners we had and wanted to continue to develop and refine our cooperation. Previously, we had had projects where both teachers and students participated. When we applied for a new project, we further developed our ideas for how our teachers at Björknäsgymnasiet together with the German teachers could continue to work together and this new project became one that focused on teacher exchanges. We saw an opportunity for our teachers, that by being given the opportunity to participate in an exchange with SBSZ Jena-Göschwitz, they would acquire new knowledge and come to insights that could ultimately benefit our Swedish students. We planned to carry out this work by allowing the teachers to make study visits, auscultations and meet German colleagues for talks and discussions. We particularly wanted to look into how they at this school work with unmotivated students. Our Swedish teachers had the opportunity to reflect on their own teaching, to see things that could be improved but also to gain insight into positive things that we are already doing at our unit of Björknäsgymnasiet. We want to further develop our collaboration with SBSZ Jena Göschwitz and continue to learn from each other.