What is your name?
Gerrit Ulmke

What is the name of your school?
It is called Helmholtzschule.

How do you promote the Wellbeing of the students and teachers in your school?
We do it with regular meetings to promote the Wellbeing of students. The students can take part in projects such as Comenius. We offer a variety of courses and see what opportunities the pupils have to improve school in all fields. It is not only a question of pupils but of teachers and parents all working together. It is working together that is the most important.

Which country, in your opinion, serves the best school meals? (and why?)
I must admit that I have not discovered all the schools right now, actually I have only been to Hungary where I liked the food very much. I can tell you about the meals in Germany, the pupils get offered a three course meal everyday, they can choose between two or three courses. Each course has got a side salad, you also can have a big plate of salad. There is tea, water and also dessert which contains all the fruit. I think that is very healthy. In general home made and freshly prepared food with the ingredients of the region is the quality you should look for.

How has education in your country changed since you were at school? (Is it for the better?)
I would say education has not actually really changed but childhood has changed and it is the reaction of schools to this change in childhood which is important. 30 years ago, when I was in school, there weren't as many single parents. Now we have to cope with a lot of divorces causing trouble to the children. We now have lots of children watching TV, I remember when I was at school we only had three programmes and at 10 o'clock they stopped the programme so there wasn't any possibility to watch more than you should. The variety of films you can watch was not there so media consumption has changed and today many children have computers and laptops in their rooms. They can use YouTube and they have iPods and iPhones with them all the time. These things can be used wrong and they take you away from your school subjects.

How do you encourage your students to have respect and tolerance for each other?
First of all there is a lot of talking to them, a lot of working in groups together, it is workshops on these topics. Of course one of these is the Comenius Project, who should know it better than you do. We have teachers to support the children who take care of them and make them have respect for others. We have tutors and mentors at our school and I think that there is a wide variety of methods to encourage the students to have respect.

If you could paint your school in one colour, which colour would it be?
Spontaneously, I would say orange and green but I can only choose one so well, maybe a very warm yellow but I also like blue, which is my favourite colour, so it is a very heavy question. But if I have to choose one colour it would be a warm yellow.

What is the best technology in education?
Depends on the technology you mean, in general to use technology is to bring knowledge to pupils to use technology as a tool to help create wisdom.

What makes a good school?
When I became head teacher, just 15 months ago, I told my teachers, the pupils and the parents that I think that what makes a good school is that those who go there want to learn and to work. So that everybody likes to go to school, and they like to go their not just for social meetings and friends but for success they have. So successful pupils like to go to school and I think this makes a good school. If they do not have success in marks there are other kinds of success that can be created.

What is the purpose of Comenius project?
Of course it is to gain respect and tolerance, to my mind is theoretically very abstract but is concrete practically. We are talking of getting to know other cultures and going to talk about getting friendships. These friendships may last a lifetime, for example, in 1979 we had a exchange from the town I went to school and a school in this region. So since 1979, I have been here in this area a lot of times. We have friends who we are still in contact from the exchange and we hope to continue this. It has lasted over thirty years and I think this is one purpose of the Comenius project, to have respect for other people and cultures and to build up friendships.

Thank you! Nice to meet you!
Bye!