At the beginning of the project, we identified our problems through the analysis we conducted. Our school always aims to provide better education, support and improve students’ learning, and carry out activities addressing social and global issues. We want our students to demonstrate not only academic success but also behaviors related to social inclusion and global citizenship awareness. Within this framework, we continue our work and consider the Erasmus+ program to be one of the most important opportunities. With our project, we primarily aimed to improve teachers’ professional competencies. For this purpose, we aimed for them to receive environmental education, exchange ideas with teachers from other countries about methods and techniques that promote green skills, and improve their English language proficiency. In addition, we aimed to support teamwork skills, develop digital competencies, and enhance social and communication skills. With the competencies gained by teachers, we aimed to raise environmental awareness among students, reduce the amount of waste thrown into the environment, increase students’ awareness of recycling, encourage respect for other species in nature, pay attention to carbon emissions.
During the preparation phase of our project, we exchanged ideas with teachers in meetings. Some of the problems we observed in our school were that our students did not pay attention to water consumption, could not separate waste, and did not use electricity carefully. These problems were more pronounced among our students with special education needs. According to the needs analysis we conducted with our partner schools, 64% of our students had very little knowledge about how plastic materials decompose in nature, the damage fossil fuels cause to the environment, the consequences of water and food waste, and the concept of recycling. 71% of the students polluted the environment unconsciously, and their carbon emissions were very high. In response to questions asked to teachers, it was revealed that 58% of them had no knowledge about carbon footprint. As a result of these analyses, we felt the need to educate our students about environmental pollution and climate change. With our project, we aimed to improve teachers’ competencies in environmental pollution and climate change and to enable them to learn methods that would help students gain green skills