Comenius Gesamtschule
The Comenius Gesamtschule is a public school in Neuss, a town located in the heart of North Rhine-Westphalia and very close to our federal state’s capital Düsseldorf. The school was established in 2014 and currently hosts children in grades 5 to 10. In total the school has got 816 students, 67 teachers and staff members right now. The school will be completed in 2022 with grades 5 to 13. By then, students will be able to leave the school with all school-leaving qualifications available in Germany. At our school all kinds of backgrounds are represented: from low social to higher social backgrounds as well as students with dyslexia, ADD, autism and mental or physical needs. We have students from all over the world. Many of them come from the Middle East.
We think that an Erasmus+ project would be a great opportunity for our students to work together with students from other countries and to increase their understanding and tolerance towards other countries. Until now our school has not been involved in any Erasmus+ projects so far which is why we are highly motivated and looking forward to running our first project. Our present 7th to 9th graders (13-15 years old) will be the student participants in this project. Teachers as well as parents will be involved in the project. The key people in charge of running the project will be a language teacher (coordinator), a language/history teacher (help with organization of project) and an art teacher (will support activities at school). Parents will host students from our partner countries. All teachers and staff members are informed about the program and in case someone has to leave their position many others have the motivation and the abilities to take over their role. Climate change is a big threat to our and our students’ futures. With this project we would like to use the students’ interest and to make them aware of their own impact on the environment. Our school has just started to raise ecological awareness and to implement this into our curriculum. In future, we’d like to improve as an environmentally friendly school and maybe even be awarded for this.
Therefore, we will try to create lesson plans and activities to implement in our current curriculum. Our school has started to separate waste in all classrooms in October 2019. In order to inform all students about the topic the school initiated an information day at school. Our students understood the importance of separating waste but still need reminders now and then. Also, we have gained some experience with upcycling as we had projects on this topic during former project weeks. We hope to improve these projects by developing workshops on waste and/or upcycling which will enable our students to give others input and practical tips on the topic. We also look forward to gain insight into the other schools as we believe they will induce us to improve our school to become more environmentally friendly.