Mittelschule Holderhecke - Bergrheinfeld (GERMANY)

   Mittelschule Holderhecke Bergrheinfeld is a middle school situated close to the industrial town of Schweinfurt. About 300 students visit our school, they are taught by 37 teachers. Students are taught from year 5 to year 9/10. Students graduating from our school mostly start job training. We have students with various disadvantages at our school: special needs students (learning and behaviour), 79 students don’t speak German as their mother tongue, students from single-parent or patchwork families, facing financial and psychological difficulties. So at our school we have a lot of children who are at risk of cultural exclusion because they are economically disadvantaged or are immigrants/refugees. Students with special needs and language problems are included into ordinary classes but receive special tuition or German lessons. Our school has been involved in Sokrates/Comenius/Erasmus projects since 2002 and actually has two etwinning projects. Apart from that we focus on the teaching of MINT subjects and on teaching music and drama (guitar and keyboard lessons, brass orchestra, musical and drama club). Our school is motivated to join this project as we know from experience that the whole school will profit enormously from the Erasmus experience. In former projects students could improve their academic achievements, learn new skills and strengthen their character and social behaviour. Thus we have a strong desire to continue working on Erasmus projects. Many of our students come from less educated families. Through Erasmus+ we have the possibility to broaden their minds, show them different places, let them meet new people and thus reduce prejudice. Those experiences will be invaluable to them and they will profit from that experience for their whole life. But everyone will benefit from that experience as we will live that project at our school, many students and staff will be involved in project work and activities at meetings. Also our staff will benefit of the project as we will get in touch with other teachers exchanging experiences. We have a very motivated Erasmus teachers’ team at our school consisting of five teachers who are experienced in organzing international projects , they are all involved in the planning and could easily replace each other. Along them we have more teachers supporting the team, they are experts in different fields, like history, language, music, performing arts, ITC, geography, art, religious education, science and sport, but also practical subjects like home economics. As all our teachers know of the big value of the project for our school so they voted unanimously pro Erasmus+. Also our headmaster and representatives of our local community support the project fully. Besides our own expertise we have a lot of contacts to external stakeholders like local museums, the local theatre, the library, various cultural and sports clubs that will support us in implementing a project about cultural heritage.