AHS Heustadelgasse–Vienna

www.heustadelgasse.at

Location

• 22nd district of Vienna (Donaustadt/Aspern)

• One of Vienna‘s most important areas of Urban

Development

• Pupils from surrounding Viennese districts and Lower Austria

Architecture

• School won several awards for

innovative architecture. • One of Vienna‘s most modern schools

Students‘ background

• Mostly middle-class families

• Few students with migration background

• Rather safe and quiet suburban area

Size

• 37 classes (23 classes in the lower secondary and 14 classes in the upper

secondary school)

• 1000 students

• A young & dynamic team of 100 teachers

Equipment

• 47 classrooms

• ‘Specialized’ classrooms for arts, PE,

biology, physics, chemistry, IT and music

• Central library

• Assembly hall (used for concerts,

theatre, etc.)

• Fully-equipped gym

Type of school

• „Gymnasium“

(~10-18 year old students, regular grammar school - focus on languages + Latin)

• „Realgymnasium“

(~10-18 year old students, grammar school - focus on Mathematics and sciences)

Subjects

• Languages: German, English, Italian, French, Spanish, Latin

• Sciences: Maths, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, IT

• Geography, History, Psychology/Philosophy

• PE: gymnastics, rowing, dancing, ballgames

• Arts

• Electives: students choose 6-8 lessons of electives in the last 3 years

Projects

• Team days (for group dynamics)

• Project Weeks (Sports, Science, etc.)

• Skiing trips

• Language Trips (UK, Ireland, France,

Italy, etc.)

• Choir

• Workshops (Roman cuisine, Biology, etc.)

• Latin, Maths, etc. competitions

• Moodle“ Interactive Platform/

Cyberschool (E-Learning, Blended Learning, etc.)

• Comenius (Quality in schools)

• And many more…

Citizenship

Languages

English is taught all 8 years (age 10-18) and students are supposed to

reach B2-level in their A-levels.

After the first 2 years students can choose if they want to study French

or Latin for the following 6 years (in the “Gymnasium”).

For the last 4 years they must choose another language, which is either

Italian, French, or Latin.

If students want to they can pick Spanish as elective in the last three

years.

IT-Competences

For students of the first 2 years (age 10-12) there is one IT-

lesson per week, which is integrated into various subjects.

In the 5th year they have 2 IT-lessons per week as

compulsory subject.

Students can choose Computer Studies as elective in the last 3 years and can do an A-level exam.

Teachers are encouraged to implement e-learning into their lessons.

Religious Education

Religious Education is not a compulsory subject in Austria. If students choose to attend it, they do so by attending lessons provided by their

religious denomination.

As most of our students belong to either the Catholic or the Protestant

Church, only lessons by these two religious groups are provided at our school during the morning lessons. All other students have to attend

lessons in the afternoon at other locations if they wish to do so.

Democracy/Citizenship

These two topics are an integral part of our History and Geography lessons.

Also languages cover aspects relevant to these topics.

Basics on the EU are taught in the 3rd year and in more details in the 6th

year as part of Geography.

Political Education is part of History in the last 2 years.

The school has a student council which is elected by the students themselves every year.

Different Cultures

Teaching and learning about different cultures are an integral part of our foreign language classes.

We have had e-mail projects with schools from other countries, f.e. India.

Language trips to GB/Ireland/France/Italy take

place in the 7th year.

Different cultures play an important role in our

German, History and Geography lessons.

Prevention of bullying

As we are quite a young school we are still in the process of developing a

school profile and also a bullying plan. At the moment it’s still more or less up

to the class teacher what to do and how to deal with a problem. As we class

teachers don’t have any special training with regard to bullying it is often a

very unsatisfying situation.

Prevention of bullying

Rules of behaviour are being developed and will be implemented soon. These

rules will apply to both students and teachers and should guarantee a

respectful communication. These rules also clearly state measures that will be

taken in case of violation.

Many of us class teachers decide on class rules with their students at the

beginning of the school year.

There is a group of peer mediators that help students with minor problems.

From this school year cyber-bullying is one of the topics of the E-learning

lessons for second year students to raise awareness and hopefully prevent it.

Acute action

There are different people students can turn to in case of bullying:

Class teacher

School doctor

School Counsellor

Any other teacher they trust

In any case the class teacher needs to be informed and it’s up to him or her to

take further steps, such as:

Talking to the students, mediate between the involved parties and deciding on a strategy to avoid future bullying.

If this fails, parents will be informed.

If this still doesn’t help, the head teacher will be involved who will take

further disciplinary actions.

A last resort is involving the school psychologist.

If none of above works, the victim sometimes changes school.

Cyber-bullying project

As a consequence of a case of bullying one of our teachers has just finished a

very interesting cyber-bullying project with 2nd year students.

Social Skills in the classroom

Just few Austrian schools have regular classes focusing on social skills such as

communication skills, problem-solving strategies and conflict management.

Unfortunately, we do not have such classes at every level at our school, yet we

are lucky to have the subject Communication Skills in year 6 for two lessons

every week, where social skills and communication skills are part of the

curriculum. Students need to understand the importance of using effective

social skills, such as, for example:

Cooperation

Being Patient

Taking Turns

Accepting Differences

Listening

Praising Others and Refraining from Put Downs

Positive Communication and Interactions

Furthermore, the curriculum for German puts a lot of emphasis on teaching

communication skills and on raising awareness with regard to self-perception

and self-judgement as well as how one is seen and perceived by others.

Using appropriate social skills is very important to us and belongs in every

classroom regardless of grade or subject. We are in the process of developing

rules for interacting with each other in our daily school life, which apply to

teachers, students and parents. There great emphasis is put on respectful

interaction and the following aspects among others are important to us:

Being Polite and Courteous

Using Good Manners

Respecting Ourselves, Others and Items

Students Council

The student council represents the pupils’ interests and democratic

influence on the school’s everyday life.

The student council is a group of (mostly) 6 students of which the first

three (according to number of votes) are the more active ones. The council is

elected every year by all the pupils of the school.

In addition to the student council, every class has two representatives

who are elected by the students of their class.

Together with representatives of teachers and parents the first three

members of the student council make up the school board. They discuss

relevant topic and make decisions relevant to the school’s everyday life. The

school board meets 5 times a year.

The student council meet rather sporadically for official meetings as they

see each other every day and have close contact anyway.

The student council has the right to use 5 lessons per term for meetings

with class representatives.

The first three members of the student council are entitled to take part in

teachers’ meetings and conferences (but not the ones on marks).

The student council has their own pin board for posting news, summaries

of meetings, etc.

The student council and the representatives of parents together organise

school related events such as the prom, for example.

The student council participates in the student parliament and seminars

organised by the Vienna-student-council.

Creativity

How do we encourage creativity in our school?

In general, there is still a high potential to

increase creativity in Austrian schools by, for

example, introducing creative subjects such as

obligatory drama classes rather than having

them as extracurricular activity. The emphasis

in schools still lies in academic training, which

not always encourages creativity. Students, for

example, have to choose between art and music

in the last two years of high school.

Creative subjects

• Drama (extracurricular activity)

• Art and music lessons

• Choir (extracurricular activity)

Open learning

Open learning is a common method used by many of our colleagues, especially

in the first four years at our school. This provides opportunities to satisfy

different learning styles.

Learn-coaching

There are extra learn-coaching classes for students to find their preferred

learning style and to help them organize themselves better, which in turn leads

to more creativity on part of the students.

Project classes

As from this school year we have introduced project classes to boost creativity

among students, at the same time increasing learner independence and cross-

curricular learning. It is a first attempt at opening teaching and learning styles

by not being confined to one particular classroom, one particular group of

students and one particular subject or teacher. In the long run students should

be able to organize their own learning according to their individual abilities,

obviously encouraging creativity, motivation, team spirit and general interest in

learning. We are now at the beginning of this project and are looking forward

to its development.

How do we implement creativity in our teaching?

The following methods are used in the implementation of creativity in our

teaching:

• Drama in education

• Creative writing in language classes

• Role plays

• Leave the classroom, getting into nature

• Projects

• Project weeks outside school

• Having students choose their own topic and supporting them in their work

process

• Experiments in science classes

• Making films and videos for youtube

• Using new media

• Group- and pair work

Extended community

AHS Heustadelgasse is situated at the outskirts of Vienna in the 22nd district

bordering lower Austria. Once an area of scattered villages, it is now a

growing area of housing development preferred by young middle class

families.

Charity Run

In the past two years year

10 pupils organised two

charity runs as part of the

subject ‘Project

Management’. The

collected donations were

given to the organisation

‘Doctors without borders’

and to a home for

psychologically, physically

and socially disadvantaged

people called ‘House Noah’, which is located on the same road as our school.

Student tuition

We have established a system in which older students give tuition to

younger ones. The voluntary payment of these lessons then goes to various

charity organisations.

Visit of old people’s home

Once a year before Christmas, a group of students from year 9 to 12 visit an

old people’s home, bring them presents, and perform Christmas carols and

plays. The experience students acquire, contributes immensely to their

emotional and social development.

Food collection for Caritas

Every year in December all pupils and teachers are asked to donate tinned

and packed food, which is then given to Caritas organisations in Vienna.

Intercultural Competence

at AHS Heustadelgasse, Vienna

There are different ways and means of fostering intercultural competence and

hopefully understanding at our school.

Foreign language classes of course play a major role when it

comes to teaching and promoting international awareness and un-

derstanding as well as interna-tional competence. By teaching

and learning a foreign language

and about other countries not on-ly awareness is raised but hope-

fully also interest in the country’s people and its culture is generat-

ed in students. The more students dive into another culture the more they get aware of and accept cultural differences and also reflect on their

own home country and native culture. In order to achieve this aim litera-ture, feature films, documentaries etc. which deal with aspects of the

foreign culture are an integral part of our foreign language teaching.

A great way of learning more about the life in another country is by

doing “e-buddy” projects, where students from out school buddy up with students from a school outside Austria and do a project together. We did

it once with a school in New Delhi and it was a great success. However, our

school is still young and we need to

expand on this idea.

Apart from that topics such as racism &

stereotypes, etc. are part of the curriculum.

Of course, also subjects such as History, Geography, Religious Instruction and

German have a significant role when it comes to promoting and teaching intercultural competence.

Another important step is travelling and providing students with the op-

portunity of meeting people from abroad. Therefore we organise lan-guage trips to English speaking counties, France and Italy where stu-

dents stay with host families and attend language classes. This helps a lot to increase interest and awareness and often students are highly mo-

tivated after such a trip because of their first hand experience with the

culture and the people.

Our school has been part of the “Foreign Language Assistant” – pro-gramme run by the Austrian Ministry of Education aimed at developing

intercultural competence by providing students with the opportunity of meeting and being taught by a native speaker. We normally have teach-

ers from either France or an English speaking country and students as

well as teachers enjoy having them at our school.

Our school has taken part in an in-ternational Comenius project once before.

The Comenius programme is one of the best opportunities of socialising with and

meeting people of all countries of the EU and thus enhances international compe-

tence of both teachers and students. Hopefully, there will be many more pro-

jects our school will be able to take part in.

However, one mustn’t forget that social skills, empathy, understanding of

other people, respect and tolerance for others, just to name a few quali-

ties, are essential prerequisites without which no intercultural compe-tence is possible. Therefore every means of helping raise these qualities

in our students is crucial, no matter whether it is peer mediation, a cyberbullying – project, or our guidelines for interacting with each other,

for example. In this context, our communication skills classes in year 6 are definitely of great importance, too.

Last but not least we teachers mustn’t forget that we are role models for our students and they also learn from us when it comes to social skills.

GRGORG 22

Heustadelgasse 4

1220 Vienna

Austria

www.heustadelgasse.at