Jong in Europa

<< Background >>This project sprang from the need to better prepare students and teachers for their fruitful participation in a diverse and international society. Both partners experience that students are limited in their intercultural skill and that theoretical knowledge about diversity, inclusion and European collaboration is not sufficiently internalised without real-life experiences. In addition, we notice that teachers are looking for new ways to integrate these themes in their lessons in a sustainable way, and to strengthen social cohesion within the classroom. With this project, we aimed to provide our students with an opportunity to – safely and with guidance – learn outside of their comfort zone through direct interaction with international peers. By collaborating on a project, staying in a host family and experience cultural differences first-hand, the students developed crucial intercultural skills while gaining increasing awareness and understanding of their own identity. Through this collaboration, teachers gained the tools to integrate internationalisation and global citizenship into their curriculum in a valuable manner and to stimulate deeper connections within and between their classes. << Objectives >>With this project we aimed to achieve the following objectives at various levels: -Students: More confident, critical and communicative students with a stronger awareness of their own identity. By direct interaction with international peers, they develop intercultural communicative skills, self-reliance and social resilience. They critically reflect on what they view as ‘normal’ and learn how to deal with diversity and inclusion within an international context. This also strengthens the social cohesion within their own class. -Host families: A higher awareness of their own family culture and a revaluation of their habits and environment. Through conversations with their guest(s), they learn about the habits of teenagers in a different country and are invited to think about cultural differences and similarities. -Teachers: A meaningful reflection on their own teaching and educational system and the added value of internationalisation. More attention for diversity and inclusion in everyday teaching. Strengthening of tutoring skills, collaboration within and outside of their section and an enrichment of their teaching with first-hand experiences with intercultural collaboration. << Implementation >>The leading activities of this project were the exchange weeks in Leuven and Amsterdam. Each involved student participated in two of these exchange weeks: one in their hometown and one abroad. They stayed in host families, who were thoroughly prepared during meetings at both schools. During the exchange weeks, students visited institutions such as the Anne Frank House and Huis voor Democratie, explored each other’s cultures and presented their experiences in a final product. Results were digitally collected in a Teams-environment. The exchange weeks were prepared within the own institutions through tutoring sessions, where students received guidance in things like initial online contact and communication, expectations with regards to experiences and skills development and the organisation of sub-activities such as city tours. After each exchange week, students also reflected back on their experiences in these tutoring sessions. To ensure the quality of project management, the project started with a kick-off meeting and ended with a final meeting which involved the core team of organising teachers. << Results >>During this project we have created the following results: At institutional level: the creation of road maps and internal tools for the preparation, implementation and follow-up of exchange weeks. These road maps were partly specified for this project, but will be further developed in the future to form the basis for other exchange projects. In addition, there were clear results at teacher level: the creation of lesson materials, the organisation of interdisciplinary activities and the design of extra-curricular activities. Relationships were formed with external organisations such as educational city-institutions. These will have a lasting value beyond the scope of this specific project. Lastly, materials and documents were created for the optimisation of the tutoring programme. Finally, at student level, results were created around the theme of ‘Identity’, e.g.:-Photo series, raps and (animated) videos around cultural identity-Completed workbooks with assignments around external visits -Blog posts about the exchange week in the personal portfolios