Our partners and members of CARE

The Wittekind-Gymnasium is a secondary school in a small town with about 950 students aged 10 to 19 years. They are taught by about 70 teachers who cover all subjects that lead the students to a good general education: natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and computer science), social sciences (history, geography, politics), (modern) foreign languages (English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian) and religion, art, sports and music. In addition, our school offers a wide range of extra-curricular activities in the fields of sports, music, languages and theatre. The Wittekind-Gymnasium has set itself the goal of teaching its students independent and creative work as well as strengthening social skills and teamwork. Learning should take place in a cooperative atmosphere characterized by mutual support. All pupils should recognise and use their individual abilities and talents. The Wittekind Gymnasium has anchored a three-week internship in the curriculum of grade 10 and prepares pupils in many ways for their choice of career. These programs are supported and professionalized by vocational orientation measures within the school and by cooperation partners outside the school. 

Our secondary school is located in Leiria, in the center of Portugal, 25 km from the coast and 130 km from Lisbon. We have close to 1500 students, aged 15 to 20 years old, from the 10th grade until the 12th grade, and night classes for adults. The school offers three areas of academic study, (Sciences, Humanities and Arts). The school also has three vocational courses, in the areas of Tourism, Design and Laboratory Analysis. Our student population is very diverse, in that we have students from Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Uzbekistan, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, France, Morocco and China. We have also had students on exchange programs, for example Intercultura-AFS Portugal, from a wide range of European countries and from the United States of America and Japan. Our staff is made up of 132 teachers and 32 non-teaching staff. The school offers a Special Education program for students with dyslexia, learning disabilities, neuro-muscle disabilities, autism, and behavioral problems. The school has been actively engaged in developing programs, projects and activities to further our students' intellectual, social and professional development, as well as strengthen their sense of national and European belonging. These aims are accomplished not only through the curriculum, but also through extracurricular activities and clubs, such as the Photography Club, the Science Club, the Arts Club, the Theatre Club, the Youth Parliament Program for Secondary Schools, the National Extracurricular Sports Program and the European Club, which has been in existence for almost thirty years. Our school has quite a good experience with our vocational courses, which might be relevant for this project. These courses include a three-month training program in a local company, linking the interests of our students with those of the local companies and giving the students a working experience in the labor market. When these students finish their vocational course they will have had experienced professional life and will be prepared for what companies expect of them. The persons involved in this project have been developing a wide variety of programs in our school since 1998 and coordinating European projects involving hundreds of students and dozens of teachers. They have worked with students with special needs, mainly autism, dyslexia and behavioral problems and have experience with vocational courses and professional training in local companies. Their main teaching area is languages, English and German, in regular and vocational courses, which require specific language teaching, but they also have computer and technological skills.

Schildtin lukio is a general upper secondary school with ~1200 students and 70 teachers. The age range of our students is 16-19 years. The school specialises in sports: we offer the top athletes a possibility to combine the challenging training and general upper secondary studies. The other specialisation area of the school is music and drama. Besides these key areas our students can choose to follow a mathematics and science path or language and internationalisation path. All these special areas are available to all students through a wide range of courses offered. Guidance and counselling is a specific compulsory subject to all students in Finnish general upper secondary schools. Widening the student’s perspective of further studies and working life and helping him to realize his own potential and possibilities in society is the main aim of guidance. Thus focusing on (international) social jobs will broaden the students' horizons and enable them to get to know a work- field that is usually regarded as less prestigious. This project CARE adds an international aspect to our students’ reflections on their future and thus will be really motivating for some students. Through this project we want to educate European students who don’t restrict their possibilities themselves and are able to cope with the global social challenges through multicultural competence. On the other hand, this project aims at strengthening and widening the school’s working-life contacts for the benefit of our students and it will also show our students some aspects and professional options of our society they are not yet familiar with. Schildtin lukio has four guidance counsellors who will all be involved in this project. In addition, we have two teachers responsible for planning and realizing the entrepreneurial education for our students. They will take part in this project at school level as well. From our previous Erasmus+ projects we have learned that there have to be several teachers responsible for a project in order to have a successful project with sustainable results. In this project we can benefit from our experiences on student job shadowing. With other participating countries we can also share some useful tools of guidance and counselling to help our students to understand their future planning potential better.

I Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Mikolaja Kopernika in Toruń is a three-year general education secondary school for learners aged 16-19, located in the heart of Torun’s Old Town, which contributes to the school’s popularity. It employs about 65 teachers, and the number of students attending the school is currently around 750. We are a general education school, but each class follows at least two extended curricula, and their students can specialize in selected subjects. Our school is said to be one of the most innovative schools in the region. In most of the classes, cooperation with various types of institutions is established so that young people can experience a more practical aspect of individual professions, e.g. court visits, participation in lectures and workshops at mathematics and information faculties of the Nicolaus Copernicus University, trips to radio and television studios, visits to theaters and art galleries. We encourage students to participate in various types of charity campaigns: annual blood donation, gathering food and volunteer visits in animal shelters, Christmas packages for orphanages in Toruń. We run numerous extracurricular classes developing students' talents and interests, e.g. theatrical meetings, editorial group of the school newsletter, tailoring group, media classes. There is a strong cooperation between teachers and the principal in the selection of topics for training councils and workshops for teachers. Our students take part in annual workshops FRIS for students (analyzing thinking styles and styles of activities) combined with the subject of vocational counseling. In 2019/2020, secondary schools in Poland enter into force the obligation to introduce vocational counseling. The basic goals and assumptions of such a subject are: training the ability to analyze students’ strengths and weaknesses, planning one’s own development, getting to know possible forms of employment, gaining the skills to prepare and write documents accompanying the job search, getting the skills of self-presentation, getting the job interview skills, expanding the information resource about job search methods, trips to workplaces, learning about the possibilities of further education and professional development, developing professional mobility awareness and stimulating activity to search for alternative solutions in various professional and life situations (including unemployment and disability), getting to know the labour market of European Union countries. Thus, our school is strongly motivated to participate in the project, since it would be a great opportunity to share the experiences. The English Faculty department is one of the strongest and most cooperative ones. As the main correspondent, Magdalena Bania, is an English teacher, in case of any need we can fully expect the assistance of other 2 English teachers. There is also a great support of the principal and the rest of the staff as far as international projects are considered.

The OMO Scholengroep Helmond consists of four schools offering all high school education levels; from practical education to gymnasium. Every day the schools are visited by 4,000 students and 400 staff members. With the disappearing borders and a world that is becoming smaller because of ICT, OSGH wants to give all its pupils an international experience at least once in their school career. You can participate in exchanges with pupils in Europe, you gain international experiences and in classes we also talk about what happens in the world. We turn our students into real world travellers by becoming ambassadors of a developing country like Uganda or because they are participating in an international project in America. We as a school think it is important to learn and experience what it means to be a world citizen. The Brainport region in which our schools are located are looking for people with international skills. They are looking for people who can look beyond the borders, have an understanding of and about other cultures and people who, besides their mother tongue, also have good command of other languages. Pupils work on their internationalization portfolio, which is filled with all kinds of projects, reports and certificates during their school career. Our school's ambition is jointly formulated (OSGH broad) and laid down in an internationalization policy plan, and the sub-schools are cautiously looking for an interpretation for their target group. Each school has its own internationalization working group, so that when a staff member leaves, enough know-how remains available to carry the project and the general ambition. In the staff department too, several people from different expertise (finance, policy and education) are taken into account and thought of; so that here too the knowledge is divided. The subschool participating in this project is the dr Knippenbergcollege, a secondary school for ‘mavo, havo and vwo’, so the three highest levels in the Netherlands. The school has 1615 students and 165 staff members. We will do this project on the ‘havo’ department. The school specialises in Technique, Art & media and sports. Our mavo and vwo departments have been certified as excellent, so we would like to use this project to create something special for our havo-students so that they too can excel. We haven’t had a focus on the social life / jobs at our school yet, so this is a perfect opportunity to go in that direction. Of course school has some projects with social institutions, e.g. bringing home-made presents to the elderly at Christmas. But we would like to expand on this. The school does have experience in successfully guiding our students to university, called scientific orientation, but that is on the VWO department, so again this is an excellent opportunity to bring this to our HAVO students as well, so they can experience what jobs in the social field contain and make a well-balanced decision for their future educations.