We wanted the staff involved in this project to be able to improve their communication skills in English so that they could develop their own intercultural projects and communicate well with their partners without necessarily going through the language teachers. In the medium term, we also wanted to enable colleagues to obtain DNL certification, or even open a European section. We also wanted to allow staff to train in Europe, exchange with other teachers on their practices and allow them to discover new teaching methods. Through intercultural projects, adapted training, the use of innovative ICT tools, peer work and interdisciplinary activities, we hoped to include and encourage our educational staff to try new activities in foreign languages and thus offer our students better quality content, in line with European expectations and the skills to be acquired today. We wanted to take advantage of these opportunities to develop our network by meeting other teachers and start virtual, hybrid or physical exchange projects.
Elsa Triolet is a public school with 535 students, including a ULIS, 15 with cognitive disabilities and about 25% with special needs (most of them with dyslexia and other dys-problems). Most of our students and families rarely access the cultural activities offered by our region. Many of them (35% low-income) come from rural and disadvantaged backgrounds and cannot afford most activities. In addition, the school success rate is low for about 25% of our students. We believe that Erasmus projects help our students to open up to other cultures while motivating them to acquire academic skills. We have therefore applied for an observation mission in Spain in order to observe new language teaching practices and to take advantage of new partnerships to start virtual, hybrid or physical exchange projects. Our other wish is to enrich our activities within the framework of the Parcours d'Education Artistique et Culturel. For this reason, the art teacher has followed a training course to learn new pedagogical practices.