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I learned what should be in an international policy and why each school should have one. Further, I've developed a draft of our own international policy.

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I learned today how other schools have set up their national policies and what they consider to be important. It made me realize that we need to revise our school's policy to present all the stuff we are doing in a more accessible way.

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I learned about strategies and policies. They are great to have! But is my school ready to invest and follow up? And am I? Book headmaster for sharing learning and plan next steps.

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- All you wish - comes true. Be careful what you wish for!

- Global education starts in yourself but it is great to have all the papers all right.
- International policy - reasonable and useful tool to make in order not only thoughts but also all international work in school.

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Today's work made me realize that our school already has some well established concepts in terms of internationalization. The only problem is that we need to make it more easily accessible to our colleagues, parents and students. For this, the example curriculums were very helpful and it's great to have a lot of material in the reader to 'borrow' some good ideas and phrases from.

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The aim of our school's European Plan is to get our students out of their comfort zone to discover all kinds of cultures and people and to bring Europe to Xanten, f.e. via exchange or our European Class. Today we noticed that we already got some kind of international policy at our school, but that it needs to be revised  and restructured.... so, we got some work to do😉

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In our school we are really at the beginning of thinking about internationalization. We already do a lot in the differents subjects, but there is nothing written in a structured way. So we startet to write down the  policy for our school. I think it is really important to think about aims and objectives in this process.

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The internationalization of the curriculum in Basic, Secondary and University Portuguese Education is essential given the high interdependence, and the multicultural and multilingual environment in which we live. For the OECD, there are five reasons for internationalization:

- encouraging better student preparation;

- affirmation of the institution's international profile;

- internationalization of training curricula;

- strengthening research and knowledge production;

- incorporation of diversity in teaching and administrative staff.

What are the positive points of an internationalization policy?

- promotion of the mother tongue and foreign languages;

- an international teaching staff helps to increase the recognition of institutions, as it attests to their quality;

- the internationalization of institutions facilitates the integration of international students, researchers, teachers and non-teaching staff;

- the recognition of the quality of Portuguese education, like other countries, makes it an exportable product / industry, which can bring significant results to the country in the economic sphere;

- the reinforcement of the “training of young people, stimulating the acquisition of learning, scientific and technological competences, linguistic proficiencies, multicultural capacities and international skills”.

The internationalization of Portuguese education may include:

- Mobility programs, such as Erasmus;

- Installation of campuses of Portuguese institutions in other countries;

- Distance learning: it has evolved slowly, but there is a great emphasis on the Open University;

- Massive Open Online Courses, MOOC: an opportunity for the development of strategic partnerships between institutions, which has the support of the European Commission.

Although, in theory, we globally agree with this framework, in practice, its state of development and implementation varies according to the contexts and needs of school education institutions in the different countries involved in this process. The path to sharing this global network, which promotes key competences for lifelong learning, leveraged by international projects such as Erasmus +, aims to strengthen the visibility of institutions and training offer, increase the recruitment of students (citizens of the world) and contribute to increase exports of quality education services.

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"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world" Nelson Mandela
Today was dedicated to the theme of internationalization.

Why internationalization?

What are the objectives?

How to achieve it?

What strategies?

How to measure?

What are the expected results?

For me, thinking about the internationalization of the institution/school is not a novelty. For the approval of Erasmus+ KA1 projects, the Portuguese National Agency privileges the institutions with internationalization projects. As I mentioned in previous publications, my institution has a European Development Plan. In a future revision, it should be called the "Internationalization Plan". As co-author of the plan, it was necessary to think about why we started with the internationalization, what were the objectives, what strategies, what activities, how to measure, how to evaluate and what impact to expect from the implementation of the plan.
the plan was based on the identification of the institution's needs:

The development of language skills

the recognition of good European practice in education

the improvement of student achievement and

the international level training of educational staff were the main reasons listed.

Currently, after this training, I consider that the internationalization, operated by the International Development Plan, is justified by new needs:

the creation of an international network of partners (teachers and schools) to collaborate and implement international activities

the promotion of European citizenship and citizenship for globalization

the construction of a feeling of European belonging

the fight against the threat of the disintegration of Europe, and

the increase of lifelong employability on an international scale should be objectives of internationalization

Internationalization must involve a school policy with an international vision, national policies and the major recommendations of the European Union. School activities, either within the curriculum or across the curriculum, should take place in an integrated way and with a common purpose.
In today's session, we also saw some examples of international policies, worked on a possible proposal for our institution and discussed the different points of view of the participants regarding internationalization.
I share with you one of our activities to disseminate our internationalization: our website dedicated to the Erasmus+ Project of our School.

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The aim of our school's  international policy is to make it a visible tool to show why, what and how we work on our way towards multicultural enriched school environment. We can do this together!

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International policy is a compact guideline for internationalisation. Global citizenship outlooks are the ones we need to work on every day. Our planet needs our care! We need to enhance new ideas, commitment to sustainability, justice and peace. As teachers we have a real chance to make the difference❤️. Let's act!