The main aims of the project were: - To increase the school employees' understanding of 21st century skills and the necessity of their development - To develop teachers' didactic skills in the area of 21st century skills, i.e. learning new methods that would be helpful in the development of given skills in learners and also in the assessment of their development. - Send a considerable number of school employees on a study migration in order to create a teaching staff that wants and implements changes in their work and thereby also influences his/her colleagues, students and the school as a whole. - Find new international cooperation partners that would enable cooperation in various fields.
Viimsi Gymnasium was opened in 2018. Our mission is to support each and every student’s development. This means that our leadership and learning activities are based on the student’s needs, and their prior skills and knowledge. We have created our student’s profile focusing on five skills (21st century skills): critical thinking and problem solving, communication, self-direction, collaboration, creativity and entrepreneurship. These skills are described in the school’s curriculum, as well as in the expected learning outcomes of courses and extra-curricular activities. Our school believes that this focus on 21st century skills influences learning, students’ well-being, inspires teachers, and enhances different ways of learning and cooperation with our partners. The teachers of Viimsi Gymnasium want to explore best practices, find useful guidelines and learn the best methods to integrate them into their everyday work. We are currently still developing our 21st century skills assessment model, which is an important step on this path. We believe that the experience of benchmarking best practices, in international Erasmus projects, will help us in this goal. In addition, as Viimsi Gymnasium is a fairly new school, we have only had a few international partners from a few international projects so far. This was also a motivation for us to apply for an Erasmus+ project.