Erasmus+ Accreditation: a dream of the Colegio Immaculada come true

Par Aitor Bilbao Burgos
Juin 27th, 2022

From our school, « Colegio Inmaculada de Alicante » we want to share our joy for all the international projects that we have managed to carry out this school year. Despite all the problems and obstacles generated by the pandemic, we have managed to meet all our objectives.

Thanks to Accreditation and three other projects of the Erasmus+ program, no less than 106 students and teachers from our school have been able to enjoy a mobility experience abroad this year.

In 2016 we managed to do our first Erasmus project by sending 20 students to Norway for a week of exchange. This year has been incredible, we have sent a total of 88 students to 5 different destinations: 11 students from 2nd year of ESO have been in Almere, Holland; another 20 from the same course in Poznan, Poland; 30 4th ESO students in Delft, Holland; 15 students from 1st year of Baccalaureate in Asker, Norway; and 12 students from our theatre group in Gorizia, Italy.

In addition, we have begun long-term mobility, which consists of sending our students to study away from home for a relatively long period. One of them has studied in the Netherlands, another in Poland and another in Norway. The experience has been wonderful and our three lucky students have discovered what it means to spend two months in an environment of linguistic and cultural immersion. The personal enrichment for them has been enormous and it is an experience they will never forget. 

And in the teaching field, we are promoting Job Shadowing and Structured Courses. Job Shadowing or systematic observation consists of sending our teachers for at least a week to a foreign center to learn about the different reality they live there day by day. Multiple areas of knowledge and organizational structures of the host center can be observed. For example, our Secondary principal spent a week at the Santa Úrsula Ledochowska school in Poznan daily observing the work of his counterpart in office and learning different ways to carry out very similar tasks. Our international coordinator was in Iceland during the same period, learning more about the Icelandic educational system in the oldest high school in this beautiful country. He was also laying the foundations for collaboration for a future exchange of students. At the beginning of September 5 more teachers will carry out similar experiences in Poland, Germany and Norway.

As part of our Structured Courses project, we will be sending 8 teachers to Ireland this summer for two-week English courses in a language immersion environment. They all travel to different parts of Ireland and in different periods of time so as not to coincide so that the linguistic immersion is complete.

Thus, we are very satisfied with the work carried out, not only because of the benefits of short-term mobility, but also because thanks to it we are taking a qualitative leap in terms of education for Global Citizenship. Since its inception, the education of the Society of Jesus has been characterized by going out to meet other cultures and other people, always seeking knowledge and personal enrichment to transform the world. The challenges today are global and we need people familiar with multiculturalism. Our students are still very young, but our task as teachers is to sow the seed that will later bear fruit.