Shortly before Easter, a group of students from Poland and their teachers visited our school. How did this come about?
As part of their participation in a competition at the HTL in Innsbruck, the Polish school looked for a local partner to take advantage of their stay in Tyrol on several levels. In addition to the competition, the aim was to offer knowledge and expertise to other students in coding workshops and to bring people into contact with each other and exchange ideas.
The Praxismittelschule was happy to accept this offer, as our way of working as a STEM school is characterized by flexibility, creativity and thinking beyond traditional teaching in collaboration with other institutions. The I in MINT stands for “computer science”, and “coding” is one of the main topics covered as part of this international cooperation.
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The students built robots, thought about them, tried them out and tinkered with them according to the motto “trial and error”. Yes, that’s English and stands for trial and error. English was the bridge language, the working language and the programming language. In addition to coding, the young people from both schools also learned how crucial a bridging language can be. Or as one student put it:
“That was probably proof that all those English lessons are not in vain and that you can use English after all. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to communicate with the young people from Poland. That would be a shame, because it was very nice.”
For us teachers, an encounter like this also proves that cooperation is possible and enriching, especially in STEM lessons – on many levels! We are therefore looking forward to further – international – encounters!
Alain Le Bec beschäftigt sich leidenschaftlich mit Sprache(n) und plädiert für ein induktives und immersives Herangehen im Spracherwerb. Als Werklehrer bereut er immer wieder, dass die Hand in unserem Schulsystem viel zu selten am Werk ist.
