ESTONIA

Tartu Kesklinna School is a basic school (grades from 1 to 9). The total number of students is 510. There are 38 teachers and 15 other people (the headmaster and the vice headmaster included) working in our school. Three of the teachers are special education teachers. Tartu Kesklinna School is situated in southern Estonia, 220 km south-east of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Tartu is the second biggest town and the culture capital of Estonia.

Kesklinna School is not an experienced organization in international activities. We have only had two international projects so far. The first was a Comenius project “LEADERS" (Leaders in Europe aiming to develop, evaluate and review their schools) from 2005 to 2008 and the second one Erasmus+ "PaCo" (Participation in Society through Classroom Activity and Cooperation) from 2018 to 2021. Yet, through those two projects, we have experienced the enriching impact of international cooperation for both teachers and students. For the students, the project activities bring a lot of excitement to the classroom and increase significantly their motivation to learn. Teachers get a lot of new experiences, ideas and learning methods.

The main aims of this project are the interconnection of cultural identity and the digital world. 2020 was declared the theme year of digital culture in Estonia and we actually look at digital culture as a part of the whole culture. Besides, cultural identity goes through the curricula of all classes in Estonian schools. It would be fascinating to find new, interesting ways to cover this cross-curricular topic in partnership with our partner schools. Connecting the legacy of the past with the digital world is a great way to connect the past (cultural heritage), the present (students) and the future (digital opportunities). International cooperation gives us the possibility to exchange good practices among different countries. We hope that learning and developing new teaching methods will lead to better learning results.

In recent PISA test results, Estonian schools were ranked high. Our school will share especially pedagogical know-how within the partnership. We are really concentrated on developing our students` social skills and digital competences. Due to the distance learning caused by coronavirus, there has been a big leap in digital teaching and learning in our school. We think that in this area we have good experiences to share with our partner schools.