Brussel, 15 February 2024

Empowering secondary school teachers and pupils

Emerging from an ECSWE working group, an Erasmus+ project on upper schools (UPSWE) was launched in April 2023, bringing together teachers and pupils.

Focusing on the needs of Steiner Waldorf secondary schools

The UPSWE project stands for Stein­er Wal­dorf upper school edu­ca­tion as a place for self-devel­op­ment of learn­ers. It aims to offer teach­ers tai­lored sup­port includ­ing effec­tive meth­ods for teach­ing ado­les­cents (age 12+) while nur­tur­ing their well-being. It also aims to start cre­at­ing a net­work of Stein­er Wal­dorf sec­ondary schools. The project was launched in April 2023, it will last 15 months, and is co-fund­ed by the Eras­mus+ pro­gramme. The lead­ing part­ner of the project is the Ādaži Free Wal­dorf School Latvia, accom­pa­nied by the Ostra­va Wal­dorf School in Czechia, the Snell­man Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege in Fin­land, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Stein­er Schools in Den­mark, the e‑learning Wal­dorf plat­form (ele­wa), and ECSWE.

Creating 15 online lessons for teachers’ professional development

One of the pro­jec­t’s results is the cre­ation of an online course for sec­ondary school teach­ers avail­able on the Ele­wa plat­form. The course includes 15 lessons designed and deliv­ered through­out the project. Some lessons are video-record­ed dur­ing the in-per­son project meet­ings in Octo­ber 2023 in Ostra­va in Czechia and in April 2024 in Ādaži in Latvia, while oth­er lessons are record­ed dur­ing the online meet­ings dur­ing the school year 2023/2024. Lec­tur­ers and their top­ics are: Dr Mar­tyn Raw­son on youth ped­a­gogy, Ansis Nudi­ens on expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing, Prof. Gert Bies­ta on work­ing artis­ti­cal­ly, Con­stan­za Kaliks on will-pow­er, Detlef Hardrop and Eeva Raunela on dia­log­ic learn­ing, and Ulrike Siev­ers on assessment.

Making secondary schools meaningful for young people

A few sec­ondary school pupils from Latvia, Czechia, Fin­land, Den­mark, and Ger­many were join­ing both the in-per­son UPSWE meet­ings. Even though the main tar­get audi­ence of the project are teach­ers, the project part­ners found it nec­es­sary to have the pupils’ voice present when dis­cussing ways of teach­ing and approach­ing youth in sec­ondary schools. Dur­ing the first project meet­ing in Ostra­va, the pupils high­light­ed top­ics that they want cov­ered in their edu­ca­tion. They were ask­ing for space to dis­cuss glob­al polit­i­cal events, the role of AI in schools, men­tal issues in youth, and hav­ing more expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing opportunities.

Want more? Watch the video message from students to teachers

Further reading