DROPS: Dialogue to Renew Old Philosophy of Schools has been a project that aimed at prolonging and nurturing each country’s traditions and culture by increasing students´ cultural awareness while accepting each other’s identity and diversity to build on the European dimension in the long term.

Our commitment and responsibility in the project was to provide the innovative material, the knowledge, the tools, the expertise and the awareness of the European citizenship to everyone involved.

By acknowledging the traditions and roots of students of each individual country they learned to understand what and where they are today. By the experience gained during the mobilities and the online communication throughout the whole project they built social flexibility and enhanced the communicative competences. Not only the teachers involved but all the others, the staff, the parents and even the wider community broadened their horizons, European and personal.

The language awareness of people involved rose and especially the students overcame the barrier of speaking a foreign language. In our case the common language was English as a second language which put everybody into the same position. Through the Language survival kits the participants got and used the opportunity to learn basic words from the languages of each country.

By observing and sharing different teaching methods and exchanging good practices we, the teachers, experienced teamwork at European level, learned from each other and gained a very positive and lasting effect on our teaching which we shared with our colleagues. Our present and future students will glean vicarious knowledge which is a common aim of teaching in the 21st century and a huge added value of the project.

The participants got an insight into different lifestyles, cultures, food, traditions and how things work - differently or similarly - in different countries. It allowed them to become more European citizens and overcome their way of thinking within the boundaries of only one country and one nation and learn to be tolerant towards different religions and customs and traditions.

We achieved our aims by helping our students in the preparation for their global future life, raise their awareness of current and future issues, building connections and strengthening the bonds among people.