ROC Mondriaan in The Hague has won a European Innovative Teaching Award.
The European Commission announced the winners on Tuesday 30 September.
Students at the school turned their own stories, about who you are and where you belong, into a stage production.
The Musical Connection began with a question: how do you make sure every student feels welcome at ROC Mondriaan?
“The project came out of a concrete need,” project leader Ferry Hogeboom said on the school’s website.
“There was a clear change going on in the student population applying to us. Gender diversity was a fact.
We noticed that as an education organisation we did not always connect naturally with the students’ world.
So we started listening, because everyone should feel welcome.”
Three countries, one production
Students and young people spoke about identity, acceptance and belonging, and students from the Netherlands, Finland and Germany built a musical out of that material.
ROC Mondriaan led the project, working with Lentiz Floracollege in Naaldwijk, the Stage School in Hamburg and the Lumit Upper Secondary School of Arts in Kuopio, Finland.
There was a reason for the international set-up: other schools in Europe are wrestling with the same questions.
The performances drew full houses and were staged more often than planned. “Some reactions I will never forget,” Hogeboom said.
“When people in the audience say it feels for the first time as if the story is also about them, that moves me enormously.” The students also came away with international friendships.
Changes in the classroom
Something changed in the classroom as well, says Marco Fontijn, director of the Dutch Academy of Performing Arts, the musical course at ROC Mondriaan.
“Teachers used to have to assess a student as a boy or a girl. We have let that go.
Teachers now have the room to look at what a student needs in order to develop as a person.
I really do see that awareness reflected in our school.”
Alongside the musical, the project produced training for teachers, practical tools and an online platform.
Anyone can use those materials, including other schools in The Hague. For Fontijn the award feels like a confirmation.
“When we heard we had won the prize, I only really realised how special this was,” he said. “In the end it comes down to something simple.
What is better than creating a place where people feel welcome and can be themselves?”
About the award
The European Commission has handed out the European Innovative Teaching Award every year since 2021.
It goes to schools and teachers with innovative, interactive and inclusive teaching projects set up with support from Erasmus+, the European programme for education and exchange.
In each country the national Erasmus+ agency chooses the winners.
This year’s theme was “Skills for life”: reading and writing, numeracy, science, digital skills and citizenship.
In total 112 projects across Europe were honoured in five categories, 23 of them in vocational education, and ROC Mondriaan won in the vocational category.
The three other Dutch winners were Stichting Weekendschool Súdwest-Fryslân in Sneek, Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing in Leiden, and the Institute for Language and Text Analysis at the University of Amsterdam.
The winners will be honoured in Brussels later this year.
