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Our project

  •      Project blog   http://school-environment-project.blogspot.com

         

     

    Project summary

    Our project is called "Environment and Sustainability - Understand, Care, Act!". Its main objective is the exchange of good practice in relation to environment and sustainability.

    Project time: September 2018 - July 2020

    Participating schools:

    • Gymnasium Ernestinum in Celle, Germany (coordinating).
    • Gymnasio Platania in Chania, Greece
    • Secondary School Ghimbav, Romania
    • IES Rafael Alberti in Cadiz, Spain

    There will be a project group in each school (20- 24 students aged 11 - 15 years) working on our topic over the complete course of the project. These students will communicate with the partner schools on a regular basis via, for example, eTwinning, email, Whatsapp and the project's blog and website. Apart from the regular work in the schools, all students from the project group and teachers will travel to at least one of the LTT meetings (see below). So for each Learning Teaching Training meeting, there will be 24 mobilities, plus 6 mobilities for the teachers' workshop at the end of theproject (also see below).

    There will be participants from Cadiz with special needs who will be provided with extra assistance.

    The objectives for the project are to raise awareness for environmental issues (UNDERSTAND), to work with students on appreciating our nature (CARE), to find out about the impact of their own lifestyle and the impact of their habits, and to learn how to minimize or optimize their impact (ACT).

    The chosen subtopics are:

    1. transport and mobility

    2. waste and plastic

    3. consumption of food

    4. consumption of consumer goods

    In this context, it is important to understand that we live in ONE world, so everything is connected and the (treatment of the) environment in other parts of the world also has impacts on our future. By starting an international project with European partners, we learn about coherences between our acting and the impacts this might have elsewhere and we will profit and learn from ideas and activities our partners have done and do.

    Practical activities which raise awareness for their own habits and behaviour (e.g. the waste diary, visit of a poultry farm, etc.) will sensitize students for their own impact. These activities are always followed by actions in which students learn how they themselves can act in order to decrease their negative impact (e.g. finding products in supermarkets which don't contain microplastic or palm oil; decreasing their own carbon footprint by taking the bike instead of the car and buying local instead of far-traveled products).

    To integrate the environmental and sustainability topic into the education of ALL students, school lessons for different subjects (Biology, Geography, History, Politics, Chemistry, IT, ...) will be developed. These lessons can be easily integrated into the subjects. Thus the knowledge and approaches for action will be available for the school communities. Apart from that, different activities will be established into the schools' calendar such as an “environmental day” and a “public transport day.” The schools as public institutions will thus become more environmentally friendly by optimizing structures and changing habits, by creating awareness beyond the school community through newspaper articles and information on the schools’homepages.

    There will be four Learning Teaching Training (LTT) Meetings, one in each country, where we actually meet with students and teachers from every school. Each meeting will focus on one of the four subtopics. There will always be a student conference, in which the students exchange their thoughts and ideas. Apart from this, the focus will be on practical activities.

    In the end, the teachers will meet in a fifth meeting in Cadiz, where we will work on the final completion of the "Sustainability-Lesson-Booklet". A concept for a "Teachers Train Teachers" day will also be created and we will agree on long term guidelines for our schools.

    This is important in order to include the "Environment and Sustainability" topic into the school programmes/ long term curricula and thus make sure that the project's results can have a sustainable, lasting effect.

    Sustainability is relevant for every single one of our students, families and fellow citizens, it is a vital topic for the future and the project helps our students and our school communities to feel responsible for nature. The experience gained in our project will enable the participants to lead a more sustainable lifestyle.

    Finally of course, we hope that the multi-cultural cooperation itself will lead to a more tolerant approach towards people with different personal backgrounds. By participating, the students will develop personally. They will make friends with people from different countries and cultures, and they will find out that there is far more they share with them than what is different between them. This is an insight we definitely need for a peaceful future in Europe.