Teacher Academies Project

The third and final TAP-TS Summer School took place as an autumn academy from September 27 to October 1, 2024 under the motto "Beyond borders: Whole school approaches to sustainability education for secondary level educators". The event brought together secondary school teachers, principals and teacher educators from all over Europe to discuss education for sustainable development "beyond borders" from the perspective of the Whole School Approach. This approach to education for sustainable development was highlighted using the example of the Friedrich-Schiller-Gymnasium Pirna (FSGP) using a mosaic principle developed by the school itself. Other interdisciplinary pedagogical approaches were discussed in other innovative workshops.

The Autumn Academy took place at Friedrich-Schiller-Gymnasium Pirna, the host of the five-day face-to-face event. The school directed by Dr Kristian Raum is the partner school in the TAP-TS consortium and plays a leading role in the development of holistic school concepts. It is located close to the Czech-German border and known as a bilingual school and is committed to democratic, anti-racist and sustainable education. In addition to the events at the school, workshops were also held at extracurricular learning locations. Activities were carried out in the region that offered practical experience in sustainability education and insights into this ecologically and culturally unique border region.

For this blog post, we are delighted to post this reflection on the experience of our last summer school, from Andrea Vivas. Thank you Andrea!

This blog is about explaining about the interesting and relevant Teacher Academy Project (www.tap-ts.eu), and the experience of their first Summer School in Cyprus. It was a dream learning about sustainability on this beautiful island in Europe. A country full of culture, warm people, sand, waves, deep history and of course so much to learn In this case the host Institution was the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute, Ministry of Education, Sports and Youth and their highly professional team. We were lucky to stay at the modern Sun Hall Hotel in front of the beach in Larnaca. The planning was well thought out and not only regarding the Workshops but also offering participants the option to live the culture through their traditional meals, doing outdoor activities and getting to know the history of Larnaca. They gave us also a glance at the history of the country with a visit to the Observatory of Ammochostos in Famagusta.

The Summer School lasted 5 days (from 26 th June till 30 th June 2023), where we as student teachers and practicing teachers got to learn from different education organizations around Europe such us: Politecnico de Santarem (Portugal), TU Dresden (Germany), University College of Teacher Education (Vienna), Eummena (Belgium), University College Dublin, University of Bristol, Cape Greco Environmental Education Centre, Education Unit for the Environment and Sustainable Development – Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, Friedrich-Schiller-Gymnasium (Pirna), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Every day we met each other, people from different cultures (Hungary, Austria, Mexico, Germany, England, Venezuela, Portugal, Ireland, etc.), ages, and part of various education systems and learned together how one can teach and learn for sustainability. The dynamic of all the activities made it so interesting and diverse that I was never bored. Every organization had a practical activity planned out, about a sustainable relevant topic, which could be taught in our schools and universities and all of them were creative and innovative. We participated in each one of these “learning packages” as “hypothetical students”. That made it very interactive, and it was also planned time to reflect in our different groups about the learnings of the day. I remembered for example, building an ecosystem with Legos, and talking about the issues in it, discussing how to improve it, the focus here was to talk about biodiversity.

Talking about Sustainability and Digitality we got the chance to turn trash in to treasure and converting cellphone parts into something with a new propose. I used my imagination and created a necklace and earrings with bronze aluminum.

Another day we got to do a role play and play an online game (stopdisasters.com) where we had to make different choices to save a community from a flood and we could see immediately the consequences (the topic here was: Climate Crisis Resilience)

One of my favorite experiences was going to Cape Greco Environmental Center, where they showed us all the programs that they offer for schools with different sustainable topics, promoting the protection of the biodiversity in Cyprus. We got to do an experiment and watched the effect of oil falling in to water and how hard it can be to control and collect it from the ocean. After this there were outdoor activities at Malama Beach, including a snorkeling citizen science activity!

But I think for me, coming from Venezuela was unbelievable the fact of having the financial and organizational support from my University (TU Dresden) to live this learning experience and getting to know so much amazing people who had such knowledge and sensibility. Because sustainability is also about equal education and that is what I lived.