The project served the purpose of further internationalizing BBS Wirtschaft and offering both students and teachers the opportunity to gain experiences and learn and work in an international context and to acquire foreign language and intercultural skills. In order to support students in internships and in languages learning and gaining intercultural competencies, intensive training of teachers was required. Since new challenges for teachers were already emerging in school management as well as in the teaching staff before the pandemic (new regularions for teachers in 2019), we also wanted to train our colleagues in the areas of stress management/ resiliecne and team building in order to adequately meet these challenges - even more so after the pandemic. In this context, BBS Wirtschaft wanted to achieve a successful application as a European School of the State of RLP and make Europe more tangible for the entire school community, both at the organizational level and at the staff level. Therefore, we consider it important that the teaching staff permanently expand their own intercultural, language and personal skills and thereby encourage our students to do so as well.
BBS Wirtschaft was internationally active before the pandemic and before the start of this project: foreign languages (English, French, Spanish) were taught and students could opt for the corresponding foreign language certificates, EBBD (European Certificate for Business Behaviour and Democracy) as an international additional qualification for A-Level students and various KA2 student projects were carried out. However, international activities were mostly tailored towards full-time students whereas part-time students (aprrentices) were mostly left out and also on the teachers' side Erasmus was regarded as a kind of privilege of the foreign language and CLIL teachers. We had introduced this project to tackle that issue just before the pandemic started. attitude now had to be changed and especially teachers who were not or not yet trained in the field of foreign languages and intercultural learning and teaching had to be motivated. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)