Above: the students working with Minecraft in Figueira da Foz, João de Barros school
Ever wondered how it would be, working as a teacher in another country, perhaps quite a ways from home? Well, why not try it out since there is a European Union program called Erasmus+ that offers this very possibility.
Back in 2018, way before anyone knew about the pandemic soon to hit the world, I started sketching the framework for an Erasmus+ grant application that would include several courses for teachers in our school and also two so called job shadowing periods: in this case, one week in Figueira da Foz in Portugal and one week for my colleague Jan in Trani, Italy. It was a lot of work to put the application together but we managed before the deadline and the grant enabled our job shadowing plans to become reality. Of course, you need to have established international connections to pull something like this off and we had friends both in Figueira and Trani so getting the necessary invitations from the host schools worked out fine.
The two job shadowing weeks took place in 2019 and gave us both interesting insights in how schools operate in Portugal and southern Italy. One thing is for sure: in Sweden, we do have an abundance of qualified information technology available for all students and teachers; however, it seems that top-notch school results did not come packaged to us with all the high tech. In the end, it's up to educators and their students to create the magic that turns into - in the best case - playful learning.
The main part of our project consisted of various courses that were - as it turned out, unfortunately - planned to be carried out in 2020 all over Europe. The Covid-19 pandemic forced us to cancel all these plans but I'm convinced that, later om, physical meetings like these will again be available in large scale. Do take advantage of this possibility!
