Eramus+ 2019

A short description of our Erasmus+KA 1 project  titled „Innovative Way to Multiculturalism”

During 120 years of its existence our institution has always fulfilled a prominent role in the field of education in the life of the region. We would like to sustain this influence in the 21st century by combining our valuable traditions with an advanced educational model.

Our mission is to encourage our students to become independent personalities who are open to the world and have a firm system of democratic values by the time they finish their studies in our school. We consider it is important that our students have the necessary key competencies that enable them to adapt to the changes of the modern world both in our home country and other countries in the EU. To be able to prepare our students for meeting the new challenges we also have to renew our pedagogical practices continuously.As a long-term objective, we would like to make process in two main areas. First, we would like to expand our international relations and employ the knowledge and experience gained by the cooperation into our teaching work. On the other hand, our aim is to introduce an up-to-date learnercentred didactic model by applying innovative educational methods.

Teaching foreign languages figure prominently in the pedagogical program of our school. Speaking a foreign language provides opportunity for our students to learn about the cultures and values of other nations in a direct way. Erasmus provides us the opportunity to teach our students how to accept and respect cultures that are different from ours, deepen their intercultural awareness, and broaden and carry our school’s international relations to a further stage. Our long-term aim is to widen the frames of the project work running at our school for several years, and join the future partner institutions into this work via common projects and subjects.

An additional objective of the project, in accordance with the 21st century school, is to develop teachers’ competencies that enable them to acquire new perspectives, methods, and the ability for innovation. The weakness of our school definitely is that most of the teachers still use the traditional frontal method that focusses on the teacher.

In the teacher mobility program we have chosen professional and methodology trainings that comply with the long-term goals of our school.

Among the 15 participating teachers there are 7 language teachers. In addition, teachers of history,mathematics, biology, physical education, and a leisure organizer takes part in the project. Six of them would like to join teacher training courses where they can develop their general language skills.Increasing their knowledge of a foreign language enables them to involve international projects together with their language teacher colleagues.High level language abilities are essential for the realisation of our other aim. To achieve the new learner-centred didactic model in our school, first our teachers have to adapt new innovative pedagogical methods. Therefore they have chosen courses which help them become more confident in using educational technology, introduce creative teaching strategies and cooperative forms of planning, where they can learn about the possibilities of integrating students with special needs, or the CLIL method. Not only participating teachers will benefit from the planned mobility programmes, the other teachers of the institution will also learn about the new perspectives and methodology by devised knowledge sharing. Expectedly this will provide them further motivation to apply for future Erasmus + trainings. The development of the teachers’ communication skills in a foreign language allows the realisation of the job shadowing planned medium-term. This kind of mobility permits us to study modern educational models and new innovative pedagogical-methodological techniques at our partner institutions, and adapt these into our own practices. Our school plans to become not only a sending institution but also a host institution, and share its own good practices.

The direct effect of the language focussed teacher mobilities will be the improvement of the quality of foreign language teaching and methodology, which expectedly leads to the increasing of the numberof language examinations. The development of the teaching strategies of the participating teachers will hopefully raise students’ motivation for language learning and interest for other cultures.

As a long-term effect of the project, the positive image of the pedagogical work in our school will strengthen in our partners, and as a result of the dissemination we will hopefully offer an example to be followed by other institutions in the region.

We also expect to obtain several foreign partner institutions with whom we can effectively cooperate and carry on Erasmus+, either within the frames of job shadowing or with the help of eTwinning, and we can accomplish project-based common work.