Toward a Sustainable High-School model - transnational collaboration to challenge the future.

Project summary

The environmental challenges which await the European Union in the years to come are considerable. They engage everyone's responsibility over decades and call for profound transformations in the way of understanding the world, and, as a citizen, to give themselves the knowledge, skills and concrete means of acting, not only locally, but also nationally and internationally. The need to project themselves into a long-term logic, naturally indicates the high school public, because they represent the future, that they are also a vector of change with their families, their loved ones, and ultimately, the generation that will follow them. Faced with these pedagogical and educational challenges, but which ultimately concern everyone, four European high schools have decided to pool their efforts and resources within the framework of an ERASMUS + strategic partnership, in order to raise awareness among their students, their teachers, the educational community as a whole, local political leaders and, more broadly, their entourage, their municipalities, of issues related to the environment. Over a two-year period, from September 2020 to May 2022, The Paul Scarron Highschool of Sillé-le-Guillaume in France, project coordinator, the Gymnasium Kirchheim in Munich in Germany, The Gouveia school group in Portugal, and the Lycée Maria Skłodowska - Curie in Skawina, Poland, have set together an ambitious project: bringing together around forty high school students around the realization of a sustainable highschool project, which will take the form of a concrete achievement in the form of a model, along with new rules for a community life, because behaviors must also change. Each aspect of this sustainable highschool (energy, nutrition, mobility, education, living together, architecture, waste treatment, citizenship ...) will be taken into account and thought about by the students participating in the project. Each school is already involved in various European or international actions (EYP, Erasmus exchanges, DNL, ​​Eco-Schools, Euroscola) and can therefore rely on an involved and motivated staff, with diverse and complementary skills. In addition, there is no shortage of local initiatives in favor of sustainable development: collaborations with universities in Poland, reforestation sessions in Portugal, collective vegetable garden in Germany, Hosting of an AMAP in France, are just a few examples of the commitment of the educational communities of these schools. The diversity of the initiatives put in place is a richness in itself, and a great opportunity to enrich everyone's practices, both in terms of sustainable development and in terms of education. This partnership is a unique opportunity for mutual enrichment, sharing of good practices and citizen empowerment. During meetings, including online videoconferences, andreal meetings in each of the partner establishments, around forty high school students will have the opportunity to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out this ambitious project: through visits to innovative sites, meetings with stakeholders in sustainable development in the different countries, workshops, partnerships with the competent authorities in the framework, for example, of the Pays de Loire region in France, and its project to renovate from a sustainable development perspective ... Thus, both students and teachers will develop the key skills defined by the European Commission: Communication in a foreign language, of course, but also the use of modern communication tools offered by new technologies, while becoming aware of the challenges, but also of the means available to European citizens to act concretely at a regional, national and European level. Each collaboratingr highschool will see its international links strengthened and its European identity developed; their brand images will evolve positively, and the project aims to be widely disseminated by various media means: the E-twinning platform will be the privileged place for centralizing the various productions and tools put in place (padlets, videos, reports, surveys ... ), but we will also be able to rely on local media such as the non-profit radio "Fréquence Sillé", in France or the Web Radio of the Polish highschool, and local press, to reach the populations, and the competent authorities. Finally, this project aims to last overthe years, and is only the first step to a more lasting connection between collaborating highschools, to which, we hope, will be able to add new partners over the years.