Within the project, we aimed to provide our Spanish learning students with an authentic language learning experience with peers. As part of the exchange, students were able to engage in everyday communication in Spanish and English within an authentic language context, allowing them to practice their language skills, for example, by talking about themselves, their school, food, hobbies, and interests. Furthermore, the students gained foreign language communication experience with native Spanish speakers through interactions with people at the partner school, in their host families and in daily life, such as in the bakery or the supermarket. Moreover, the project aimed for students to experience and reflect on the Spanish culture, including its history, typical habits, traditions, culinary specialties and the Spanish school system. This took place both in the village of the partner school and during excursions to various destinations in the surrounding regions. During the second exchange, another goal for the participants was to develop joint ideas for their own actions in the world in line with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
The Neue Oberschule Gröpelingen (NOG) is a secondary school in Western Bremen. Many of our students speak a different native language than German and come from economically disadvantaged families with low educational backgrounds. We adjust to the needs of our individual students with adapting teaching methods. Spanish is an elective subject and can be chosen from the 6th grade onwards. As part of our Erasmus project, we conducted a student exchange with a Spanish secondary school for the first time. The cooperation between the two schools began in early 2022. Between February 2023 and April 2024, a total of 2x12 Spanish students from our Spanish partner school IESO Joaquín Romera de Mendavia visited us in Bremen, and a total of 22 students from NOG, divided into two groups, visited our partner school in Mendavia. The German students who participated in the exchange program were between 13 and 16 years old. Apart from one student, they were in Spain for the first time. Reasons for that are limited financial resources and individual residence permits that do not allow departure from Germany.