Environmental education and healthy lifestyle are key aspects of 21st century education. These principles are addressed in the Agenda 21 and Millenium Development Development Goals. The former is a comprehensive set of actions to analyse human impact on the environment. The latter tries to ensure environmental sustainability as well as good health and well being, zero hunger, responsible consumption and production, climate action, affordable and clean energy, etc. We realise our students have studied this theoretical framework but sometimes are unaware of taking responsible action in defense of the environment. This is even more noticeable if we analyse the aspects of physical and mental health and well being, since healthy habits have been jeapardised after the Pandemic, not to mention the increasing use of technology and the decline in developing outdoors activities. Green Teens was conceived as an integral project in which all members of the school community can take an active role. The main objective was to develop, through cooperation, the so-called "green talent" in our students, that is, the importance of taking responsible decisions towards their life and environment, greening their school and their area.
Our school, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, is the only high school in the area of San Sebastián de los Reyes that does not offer the bilingual curriculum. Yet, some of our students are really interested in developing their language skills beyond the classroom environment, so we needed to explore other ways in which we could promote the internationalisation of our school. Since 2020 we had implemented some Etwinning projects with European schools, and had seen how enthusiastic students were to collaborate with European children of the same age. Encouraged by Madrid Norte Ctif adviser Gema Bartyolomé we considered the possibility of embarking in a small-scale project and some teachers participated in an in-school seminar or training workshop to get to know all the possibilities that the Erasmus+ framework offers and find out the mechanisms to apply for one of the grants. This multidisciplinary team made up English teachers, maths, history and language teachers made it possible to compile the school neccesities and integrate them with the priorities outlined in the Erasmus+ programme and Council of Europe as well as design a series of activities. We contacted some schools through the School Education Gateway and found suitable partners.