Erasmus+ opettajien täydennyskoulutus

Why did we apply for this project?



Our goal was to develop the operating culture of our school and one important focus was to develop internationality further after the break. The priorities of our school are well-being, participation and interaction, and we wanted to develop these skills in our students in the long term. Increasing internationality in the everyday life of the school would also bring more comfort to our school staff and students. Increasing tolerance was also relevant when the school had started to have students with a foreign background as well. An important goal of our project is also the development of teachers, and most of our mobility participants set goals for developing their language skills. In addition to improving the teachers' ability at work, the goal was also to get ideas for their own teaching and for support students. With the help of the project, we also wanted to get new contacts in Europe and thereby expand cooperation opportunities in the future also for students mobilities. After several years, we started to aply an Erasmus+ project for student mobility. An important factor in our application process was our principal Harri Penttinen's vision to make internationalization and once again a part of our school's everyday life.

What did we want to achieve by implementing the project?



In our school, we needed more and more skills to create a study-friendly atmosphere and support well-being. The need to support young people who, have difficultes to came to school and are therefore at risk of being marginalized, as well as the need to get new information, ideas and motivation to support students and their everyday work. In the long term, we wanted to increase internationality in the school's everyday life and thus also improve the school motivation of students who are at risk of being excluded, and to get students and staff to accept differences and the courage to develop their own communication skills and language skills. Many of our teachers feel that even though they know English words, they don't have the courage to use it in everyday life. In addition, we wanted to get more knowledge and skill for our teachers and enthusiasm and motivation to plan mobility activities in the future, where our students can get to know new cultures and study with their peers either online or on site. In terms of internationalization, we were also interested in telling about the good practices of Finnish school culture at our own school (such as that we have social coundelor and hobby counselor, special education support and social strengthening groups)

What activities did we implement?



Four of our teachers participated in the courses and three in job shadowing as follows:
Teachers course, Hungary, Budabest: Secondary school teacher at the course "Brain Based Learning- To learn how students really learn"
Teachers course, Italy, Florence : Three secondary school teachers at the course "Florentine Renaissance art"
Job shadowing, Spain, Tenerife: Three primary school teachers, CEIP Fernando III El Santo, Tenerife

Due to Corona, we were not able to carry out all the movements we planned until 2022-2023. That is why not everyone was able to attend the participate to education courses that we had originally planned and one teacher changed school. One of our principals and our physical education teacher both had to cancel their trip the day before because of the corona virus, and they didn't have the opportunity to go again, so the people and destinations changed.
In the last year of the project, in addition to these mobilities, five teachers- from Spain and several international students of University of Jyväskylä attended job shadowing weeks at our school

What were the results of our project?

Spain, Tenerife, 3 classroom teachers job shadowing: We got the first elementary school teachers involved in mobility. The teachers were able to compare the differences between the Spanish and Finnish educational systems and cultures. They participated in the lessons and the energetic spanish children had a lot of functional exercises, from which our teachers got ideas for their own work and especially for creative subjects. All our teachers also teach English to their own class and felt that they got confirmation of their language skills, and in addition, there are many pedagogical ideas to teach English to lower graders through activities. In the island nature is all around and environmental education was emphasized, where new ideas came from both sides - environmental education as a subject for Finns excited local teachers. Under the guidance of local teachers, the teachers also got to know Tenerife's cultural heritage and received inspiring material for both their geography and history lessons.

Our teachers also took a lot of our knowledge about school well-being to the school in Tenerife, e.g. the model for dealing with absences, special education and the model for hobbies during the school day in Finnish schools. It was very important to notice how many things work excellently in our school and this increased our teachers' well-being and motivation. The active hobbies during breaks that works in our school is not successful in this Spanish school, where the lessons were 75 min and the breaks were 5 min. On the other hand, work peace was better in Spain, when phones were not allowed to be brought to school at all. With the greetings of the teachers, we decided to change our middle school school culture so that there is a stricter reaction to the use of the phone in class - we will get a new Wilma label: "using the phone during the lesson ewhitout permission" and thus we hope the students will consentrater better.

Florence, Italy: Teacher Academy's course: Introduction to Renaissance art and its influence in European culture in general - in the course our teachers got inspiration for their teaching according to their goals. It has been possible to add a touch of art to the teaching of history, mother tongue and literature and, more broadly, pictures of different eras from the point of view of an ordinary person
In addition, their goal was to strengthen their language skills and increase their courage in communicating in a foreign language. .
The teachers felt that their world view broadened and thanks to the course, they paid more attention to the influence of people from the past to our lives and opened up this knowledge to their students as well.

Budapest, Hungary: The Brain-Based Learning course was very functional and everything was justified with researched information with references and the exercises were done by ourselves and we thought about how to implement them with the students. It was also interesting in the course how, even in Finland, many used study methods were questioned through new research and better methods were presented. The course provided a lot of practical exercises and teaching material, especially for student guidance, teaching study skills, and e.g. memory exercises aimed at supporting students' studies. Very useful and bringing new information was the research that opened the mental barriers to learning. The course material is used by all the teachers at our school and was presented at a meeting and separately for guidance and support teachers. The course was very concrete and useful, especially for special education teachers and career guidances, but also useful for other teachers. The course group was very tight and the program also included getting to know the local culture and refreshing yourself. The course's impact on our school's international activities was great, as one course participant came to our school for a job shadowing visit right after a few months with his teacher colleagues, and accordingly, with their help, a visit of three of our teachers to an elementary school in Tenerife, Spain was organized at the end of spring. Later in May, on her recommendation, we received two more guest teachers at our school, but from a different school.

Several foreigners who study at Jyväskylä's higher education institutions have also visited in our school, and some of them also taught classes while completing their training. With the realization of the project, we got the motivation to apply for accreditation 2022 because there were many enthusiastic teachers and the international team got bigger. Internationalization can now be seen in our school's everyday life. In many of our students, the motivation to study the language increased when English-speaking teachers and students visited the class, and these have also brought variety and joy to their school work.

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