Our main goal was to equip our teachers and other school staff with the tools they need to help students develop social and emotional coping strategies and skills. We also aim to develop ways to create a safe, inclusive, and encouraging school environment for everybody. This was done by focusing especially on two groups of students: 1) students struggling with their mental health or social challenges and 2) students with other language or cultural backgrounds than the majority population. These two groups of students suffered especially during the pandemic, but there is still an ongoing downward trend in the social and emotional wellbeing of students. Also, our school has a steadily growing number of immigrant students and we wanted to raise the awareness and readiness of our staff to include them in our school in the best possible way. This way, we want to promote social and cultural inclusion, eliminate prejudice and help each student learn and grow in the best way they can. Our secondary goal was to strengthen our international work by providing staff with international contacts and new perspectives on our school community. We also wanted teachers and staff to improve their social, cultural and language skills.
Zachariasskolan is a primary and lower secondary school with ca. 660 students aged 6-16, which means that the youngest students are in their pre-school year and the oldest in grade 9. Our staff consists of ca. 90 teachers and teaching assistants. We are established in a small town in the Swedish-speaking part of rural Ostrobothnia, Finland. Our teaching language is Swedish. We have a well developed special needs department and also offer teaching in a calm small-group environment for students who need an alternative learning environment due to neuropsychiatric conditions. We also have a mixed-age preparatory class for immigrant students who are doing their preparatory language eduation before they become integrated in regular classes. The number of immigrant student have grown rapidly over the past ten years, which is one reason we need to develop our professional skills. Since 2018, we have engaged in Erasmus+ KA2 projects with our older students (years 7-9). This has been highly rewarding for students and teachers who are directly involved, but also for our school community on a general level. By applying for a KA1 project, we wanted to offer possibilities to participate in Erasmus+ activities to a broader part of our staff.