Brussels, 26 May 2023

Upper school as a place for self-development

Six partners, including ECSWE, applied for an Erasmus+ small-scale partnership for the development of Steiner Waldorf upper schools.

Five inspiring online meetings will be open to teachers across Europe

Between 1 April 2023 and 30 June 2024, the project part­ners will organ­ise five online work­ing ses­sions acces­si­ble to all teach­ers from Europe and the world. Two live project meet­ings will be in Sep­tem­ber 2023 in Ostra­va and in Ādaži in May 2024. Themes that will be explored: youth ped­a­gogy today, aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects, art, prac­ti­cal sub­jects, and dia­log­ic assess­ment in upper schools. The part­ners will also start devel­op­ing online cours­es for sec­ondary school teach­ers, includ­ing dig­i­tal resources in forms of videos, TED talks, texts and interviews.

Partnership includes schools, teacher trainings and associations

The project appli­ca­tion grew in the ECSWE work­ing group on upper schools and was hand­ed in by the Lat­vian Ādaži Wal­dorf School as the lead­ing part­ner. Anoth­er expe­ri­enced upper school in the project is the Ostra­va Wal­dorf School from our Czech mem­bers, while the ped­a­gog­i­cal exper­tise is also com­ing from the Finnish part­ner, Snell­man Col­lege. The Stein­er Wal­dorf fed­er­a­tion of Den­mark and ECSWE have the role of broad­en­ing the net­work and spread­ing the project news and invi­ta­tions, while the E‑learning Wal­dorf plat­form will be respon­si­ble for shap­ing and host­ing online meet­ings and courses.

Well-being as a precondition for academic achievement and more

The aim of the project is to cre­ate a Euro­pean net­work of teach­ers of sec­ondary edu­ca­tion who see well-being as a key ele­ment of a thriv­ing learn­ing envi­ron­ment. This includes their aspi­ra­tion to broad­en their cur­ricu­lum with well-being-ori­ent­ed teach­ing meth­ods and devel­op per­son­alised and dia­log­ic assess­ment. The part­ner­ship agrees that well-being and resilience are then key aspects of trans­for­ma­tive learn­ing, the kind that go beyond nar­row under­stand­ing of learn­ing as the process that results in only aca­d­e­m­ic achievements.

Fast forward to the 6 February 2023 with the good news

The project pro­pos­al was approved by the Lat­vian Eras­mus+ agency and the 15-month imple­men­ta­tion start­ed on 1 April 2023.