Q: What initiative is your school most proud of??
A: It’s difficult to say: the Comenius school partnership has been a fantastic experience for our teachers and to a smaller extent to our pupils but definitely the Euroclass Project in Tilff is a more personal achievement, since we managed to adapt the original European Classes idea into our own situation and to our specific needs. For our pupils of technical education we made the framework less strict and more inviting to be creative in expressing their ideas, in presenting their own presentation work. All this reflects in the willingness to speak with new people, in a foreign language most pupils had so far only be using within classroom walls.

Q: How do pupils participate in the organisation?
A: In the European Classes we take part with a full class, whereas our German and Swiss friends build their delegations with volunteers. Both choices have their advantages and disadvantages of course: our full class delegation is easier to do the preparatory work with because you don’t have to plan meetings outside the normal schedule. However working with less motivated pupils (they have to participate because they happen to be in this class) is sometimes a disadvantage but in the end it is a challenge to translate their scepticism into curiosity and enthusiasm, in which, by the way, we have always succeeded. As the Comenius partnership is concerned pupils write a motivation letter and also apply orally in an interview. This is how we select pupils to represent their fellow students abroad.

Q: Your pupils’ mother tongue is Dutch. Was it difficult to convince partners in other European countries?
A: Not at all. Our partner schools are amazed by the fact that our pupils speak at least three foreign languages next to their native language, being Dutch or (for some) French. On the other hand our pupils sometimes complain about the fact that Germans and Swiss “only” speak two foreign languages, so at first they feel it is kind of unfair. Gradually our pupils realize however that their ability to speak French, English and German is a huge advantage they can absolutely be proud of.

Q: What are the learning outcomes of study trips to, say, Opalenica (Poland)?
A: This is an interesting question because we are rethinking this partnership at the moment. Our Polish-Belgian cooperation started as a spin-off during a Comenius preparatory visit. The main idea was to fight prejudices: for Polish pupils about “living in an expensive country with a very complex political structure, in which four languages are spoken”, for Belgian pupils about “life in a remote, maybe underdeveloped Eastern-European country of which we know very little”. In this project we deliberately chose for the accommodation type in host families, because we believe that – if you want to fight prejudices – you have to submerge youngsters in every-day life, confronting them with habits and traditions as they exist in present day families. We also make our pupils work together as they have to compare their schools and curriculum and present the differences and similarities to each other using a PowerPoint presentation. In this respect we also integrate ICT and languages into the project and pupils practise their conversation and presentation skills.

(Rest of the interview on 2 July)