It has indeed been a busy, fulfilling and an incredibly rewarding year at ISB- the year 2015/16. For me, personally, and for the Erasmus team as a whole, this has been even more so. There has been a lot of effort which has been put into securing the grant for the Erasmus Plus Project and it had to win the approval of the EU.
It is not just the school which has benefitted from this project, but the community as a whole. When we first met to decide on the theme of our project, there were no two opinions as to what it was to be about- Bridging the Gap! This has been our motto and goal all along this year, with not just the Erasmus team, but all the teachers in school coming together to bridge that gap between the Hungarian and the British curricula and bring them together seamlessly to produce something which was beneficial and unique for the children.
This happened in a number of ways throughout the school year from teachers from two streams team-teaching, to English teachers adapting the Hungarian curriculum and vice versa and teachers observing the practise of their Hungarian/English counterparts. Every teacher who went on the training shared their experiences abroad- cultural and practical- with their colleagues, thus resulting in an overall understanding of some new practices and appreciation of the efforts involved. This was even more relevant as every teacher went on a different program to a different city in the UK or even different countries.
ISB was able to showcase the experiences garnered by the teachers who went on the Program at the Public Library in the 12th District, where the workshop was very well attended by educators from other institutions and also the general public. This has also brought the school to the limelight for the unique program that it has been able to offer, which is unlike any other school in Budapest.
The next step now is passing on the baton to the other teachers within the school, by way of workshops and training, which would enable them to adapt the new techniques and methodology learnt and apply them in context of our school. This process has already started and will continue well into the next school year, with teachers experimenting with methods like CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) which are very relevant for a bilingual school and can be applied to any subject taught in the school.
The future looks good for ISB with so much of new methodology, practices and experiences to be shared with the school community and with also the wider bilingual community. The school will collaborate with other bilingual schools in the city to help them benefit as well. This project has thus bridged and will continue to Bridge the Gap between curricula, schools, cities and even countries.
Bridging the Gap- Híd a kultúrák között 