Aware of our context, our school aimed at turning our weaknesses into strengths. One of our main objectives was for teachers to acquire tools and strategies to address and promote diversity in the classroom, overcoming prejudices and discriminatory attitudes while developing tolerance and respect (intercultural and formative dimension). A significant percentage of our gypsy students drop out of school early. On the other hand, we have a significant number of immigrants as well as students with specific educational needs coexisting in the same classroom. It was clear that traditional teaching was insufficient to meet these needs, so it was essential for teachers to learn about other European realities with the same problems and to acquire knowledge in new methodologies such as Project Based Learning, gammification or the flipped classroom (didactic and professional development dimension). Finally, we intended to promote linguistic diversity by communicating with other European schools and improving the level of teachers in other languages (linguistic and communicative dimension).
This project is the result of a thorough analysis of the needs of our school. When we elaborated our European Development Plan we found a great diversity of students, a not very inclusive environment, early school dropout in certain ethnic groups and a series of contextual weaknesses that made a series of urgent actions necessary. After examining our weaknesses, we were clear about our needs: to strengthen the development of key competencies, improve coexistence, reduce early school dropout rates, promote gender equality, favor real inclusion and provide teachers with the necessary tools to carry out their educational work successfully. Despite our path in other European programs, we felt that we lacked to complete the training of our teachers in aspects related to our weaknesses in the following dimensions: (a) European dimension of the school: cultural and formative. b) Didactic dimension; learning new pedagogies (PBL, UDL...). c) Professional development dimension d) Didactic and communicative dimension. The reflection of our teaching staff on these aspects motivated us to apply for the project.