Our school - Harjun koulu Lohja

  • Harju School, situated in the city centre, is one of the six public secondary schools in Lohja. There are about 350 pupils aged between 12-16 and 40 teachers and other staff in Harju School. There are two classes of pupils with special needs. The subjects to be taught in our school are: Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, PE, Arts, Music, English, Swedish, Home economics, Technical and Textile work, Biology, Geography, Health education, History and Civics. Our students learn at least two foreign languages, English and Swedish. Optional languages are German, Spanish and French which can be chosen for the 8th and 9th grade. The main priorities of our school are safe learning environment and basic education of high quality. The pupils´ psychological and physical well being is important for us. The pupils are part of the school community and involved in the activities at school through different projects. Other important aims of our school are sport and healthy lifestyle, sustainable development, internationality, local culture and culture in general. Nowadays young people are a lot under the influence of English/ American culture and language. Therefore, we would like to motivate the pupils to learn also other languages than English. Because Finland is a small country and there aren't many Finnish speakers in the world so it is very important for us to study other languages as well. The languages (German, French and Spanish) that are involved in the project are taught in our school. This project gives the pupils a great opportunity to learn and use foreign languages and get to know people and cultures from other European countries. Through this new Erasmus+ project we therefore want to promote social, ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity in Europe. We also would like to implement ICT-tools, multiliteracy, phenomenon based learning and broad-based-competence skills (our new National Core Curricula) into this project. We also enhance pupils' skills (lifelong learning) and competences and active role in society. From the previous EU projects we have good experiences of the whole school community working together.