Case Studies

Højskolen Østersøen is a folk high school. It is a boarding school where all students live during the courses. They eat, they sleep, they study and they spend their spare time together. The get an enormous amount of opportunities to communicate in different languages, to increase their self-confidence and to achieve knowledge about other cultures and traditions. The folk high school courses last for four months.

The Højskole Plus project takes place after the stay at the folk high school. The purpose is to give the students an opportunity to use the social and especially the language skills they have obtained during the courses at the folk high school. We want to give them the opportunity to get a professional career in addition to their studies at Højskolen Østersøen.

Højskolen Ostersoen is a folk high school. It is a boarding school where all students live during the courses. They eat, they sleep, they study and they spend their spare time together. The get an enormous amount of opportunities to communicate in different languages, to increase their self-confidence and to achieve knowledge about other cultures and traditions. The folk high school courses last for four months.

The Highschool Plus project takes place after the stay at the folk high school. The purpose is to give the students an opportunity to use the social and especially the language skills they have obtained during the courses at the folk high school. We want to give them the opportunity to get a professional career in addition to their studies at Højskolen Ostersoen.

The actual Højskole Plus projects take place after the stay at the folk high school.
The courses at folk high school Højskolen Østersøen provide for 15 lessons of language learning every week. We work in an integrated way with groups of students who are native speakers of Danish or German. The Germans learn Danish from the Danish students and the Danish students learn German from the German students. Teaching methods are communicative in the sense that the students help each other to perform tasks and assignments. The languages are Danish, German and English. During their stay at the folk high school, the students and the folk high school work collaboratively to find a job. The focus is to put together a targeted CV and to write a motivated application. Next, the folk high school activates its network of commercial and non-profit organisations throughout Europe. Within a fixed framework, we determine any possible jobs for each student, and contact the relevant partners. Once the initial dialogues have taken place, we put the student into contact with the employer. The idea is that the students bring along their knowledge and skills from the folk high school to Austria, Berlin or onto the rivers of Europe. They work as voluntaries in Berlin LIVE, as ski instructors in Wagrain in Austria or as members of the service staff on a Viking River Cruises ship.

An employee from the folk high school is always present at meetings where the agreement on the future job is made, and we see to that the environment our students will encounter is up to standards. During the work stay, the folk high school acts as a lifeline should the student encounter any problems abroad. In these situations, we act as mediator, and we talk to both parties to find a reasonable solution.

The project Højskole Plus focuses on the meeting between different languages and cultures in the daily school work. At Højskolen Østersøen you live together, you work together with different tasks and assignments, and you are forced to understand each other, both linguistically and socially.

We want to build bridges between people and cultures. We want young people to grow together as individuals as well as to learn foreign languages. This year after Christmas 2012, 33 students will to go to Austria to work.

To get the recognition and appreciation for the way we work, to get confirmation that we are working with the right focus and to make our project inspire social educators and learners not only in Denmark but also across borders all over Europe.

At the moment we are working on combining Højskole PLUS with the demoCRAZY project of 2013. More information on this link http://www.hojoster.com/democrazy/democrazy-english

The project Højskole Plus consists with the European Criteria especially with the European emphases. The project is an innovative way of working, focusing on language learning and intercultural skills. The circumstance that Højskolen Østersøen is a boarding school where the students both live and study gives the students optimal opportunities to develop their communicational as well as socio-cultural skills. The Højskole Plus concept stimulates the learning of several languages, and it increases young people´s chances to get a job, including jobs abroad.