Teacher / Educational staff

Don’t be a lone fighter!

Almost every cooperation starts with the one person, the one teacher that is enthusiastic about international exchange and starts with a high motivation because of his or her own experiences. He or she is convinced of the benefits of international experience and intercultural exchange. Often, he or she had the possibility to take part in exchange projects by him / herself, maybe as a student or volunteer. Often, he or she is an open minded person, likes to meet other people, loves to speak different languages and is open to step outside of her or his comfort zone.

But – as said in the section Management of schools or VET institutions – to make international exchange sustainable we need to engage a bigger group of people; we need to engage the whole team. We need to understand international strategy as part of our school values.

As a result of our partnership project, we determined some points that could help teachers to start international cooperation:

  • Network, relations to international partners
    • Partner match websites
    • ERASmobility
    • eTwinning not helpful for international cooperation
  • Local coordinator: It can be very helpful and more efficient to build a local network and hire an ERASMUS+ coordinator; this coordinator should combine knowledge in international projects, have an overview to other projects in the region (network), bring experience in writing applications and managing projects
  • Find partners that meet your expectation of your output
  • Information about different types of projects: Involved teachers need to attend conferences / information meetings
  • Build small project groups, maybe two or three colleagues to cooperate; not more, because otherwise you might have too many things to exchange and decide and it can get too confusing
  • Your closest leader needs to have a positive attitude towards international cooperation
  • Support of leaders (also financially!) and colleagues (take over work)
  • Teachers needs to bring own motivation and should be ready to travel (sometimes you might have whole travel days, or you need to get up very early and spend a day at the airport)
  • A minimum level of English skills is required; also, you should have no barrier in speaking other languages
  • Project work should not be overwhelming: Make sure your expectations on output are realistic and not be too demanding; respect the workload of a teacher in school!
  • Exchange on expectations regarding intellectual output and workload for each partner before the start of an international project (during applicational period)
  • Motivation for schools: There should be some way of recognition of international exchange, e.g. by credit points

There are different types of ERASMUS+ projects which require different ways of preparation:

  1. For partnership projects:
    • teacher meetings and exchanges are important
    • travel with small groups of students (four to six students with two or three teachers)
    • if you meet with groups of other students, make sure that to have the same size of student group per country – this can help to make the students get to know and interact with each other
    • travel time (one week for student exchanges)
  2. For mobility projects:
    • visit partners abroad
    • get to know the living conditions in the travel destination
    • get to know the educations system in the country you send your students and colleagues
    • organize preparational meetings with your students in order to help them to feel secure and well prepared to any kind of challenge once they are abroad

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