Through students' mobilities activities, job-shadowing and training courses, we meant to learn new procedures on recycling, waste management, energy saving and improving cleanliness standards. We also wanted to foster students' participation, both in direct actions to improve our school's environmental quality and dissemination activities. For teachers, we wanted some specific training that would help us achieve the aforementioned improvements. And because we want these improvements to last beyond the project life, we established environmental criteria to be presented to the School Council to be passed, thus entering the School Project Plan. This means that positive environmental activities would always be part of school's life, regardless of changes in the directive board or teachers. Of course, we also wanted our students who participated in activities with students from Italy, France and Poland, including those with fewer opportunities, to learn to be respectful and interested in their cultures, while having the chance to interact in real communicative situations in English.
Our school holds more than 1,000 students and nearly 100 teachers. After having noticed wrong attitudes towards recycling, energy waste and litter in the schoolyard we decided to aim at environmental education improvements that could yield practical outputs. This is how the idea to apply for the project was originated. Both teachers and students would be able to learn how environmental issues are dealt with in other European schools by means of students' short-term mobilities and job-shadowing. Teachers would also get specific training. Our project had two directions: on the one hand, direct action on the school's environmental needs; on the other hand, dissemination of good environmental practices in our school and community. We decided that our students, including those with fewer opportunities, had to directly participate on activities for both directions. Also, our pupils would benefit from being in contact with students from other countries: they would use English in real communicative contexts while taking part in different activities, and tolerance and respect for others would be fostered. Besides, we knew that approaching environmental issues from an Erasmus+ project would make our intent more significant.