Funded Projects 2024-2025

The projects below have all been funded through APEEE Project Calls. They are scheduled to take place during the 2023-2024 school year.

Art. is Everywhere

A creative workshop 'as a European school' on the theme of Europe values: solidarity, democracy, tolerance, respect and art . It would take place in such a way that participants would have at their disposal the texts of the Treaty of the European Union, fundamental text of democracy and pluralism. They would have photocopies to cut out and could read the texts (in FR, EN) and choose the art. who hits them the most; then they would have at their disposal a small canvas (photo attached) on which to stick the Article. and then with stencils, they write ART. IS EVERYWHERE, to play on the double meaning of the word ART. article of the law and art. The small canvases would then be fixed on a large panel and form a large collective work full of colors, I thought of doing something graphic with fluorescent colors. The coherence would be easily manageable because the format is standard and the coordination would be easy because the techniques would be more defined, moreover I consider the workshop fun but also instructive for the civic sense that the creative activity would have in itself, open to S1-S5 children and open to children with disabilities. In the appendix an example of a canvas.

Building More Meaningful Connections and Developing Teamwork Skills with The Bridge Theatre”

  • The Bridge will design and implement 18 tailormade interactive workshops that will enable participating students to connect with each other in a manner that goes beyond the way that is feasible in a normal classroom environment. They will do it through participating in drama exercises in English
  • Target group: P5 classes (9 - with Berkendael) and L2 English S1 classes (9)
  • Period: October 2024 - end May 2025
  • A series of 18 classes during different times (to be agreed upon acceptance of the proposal). Workshop sessions are suggested to be run on Friday mornings, allowing 60 minutes per session for The Bridge’s professional actors to energise and engage the kids
  •  We will cover nine P5 and nine S1 L2 English classes (of about 23 students per class) amounting to roughly 414 students total
  • The project will be implemented by The Bridge Theatre. Artistic Director Edward McMillan will be in charge of choosing their best fitting professional actors, briefing and preparing them for the specific workshop. He will also be responsible for the quality of the instruction and liaise with project coordinators Heidi and Brendan (who in turn will liaise with APEE). The aim of the coordination between Edward and Heidi/Brendan will be to tailor the workshop at hand to the needs of the specific class and also to make sure that feedback on the sessions will be integrated into the conception of future sessions.

CanSat Shield

The CanSat Belgium project is a national competition where students create a small (can-size) satellite. We have had teams at EEB1 participate in the past two years, and we would like to have more participating teams in the years to come. If the teams are pre-selected, they receive a 'kit' with a microcontroller, and some sensors. We feel like the kit the teams receive is deficient on two fronts; timing and ease of use. The timing is bad, because the students can experiment with the micro-controller as they are going through the project. The ease of use is poor because students have to learn to solder, on top of everything else. The Szyszka team has created a PCB that would enable EEB1 students to get started on CanSat at any point through the year, in a much more plug-and-play setting. Students from all sections in secondary could then give a try at CanSat, and get immersed in STEM. We hope that the CanSat Shield could also be used in Science courses (as a basis of recording interesting data with sensors)

Conférences et atelier pour accompagner la nouvelle politique sur les téléphones portables à l'école et la sécurité en ligne

  1. Workshops in situ (to be repeated at 3 occasions for more pupils to be able to attend) moderated by Olga Nikonchuk-Darras (parent of the school) expert in cognitive science and childhood, to be organized in late afternoons i.e. outside school hours, 2 on campus of Uccle and 1 in Berkendael in October/November, for pupils of P4 to S1 accompanied by their parents, entitled ""les dangers de l'enfance digitale" parents/pupils would have to register to participate. The workshop would be complementary to the CyberHeros programme (in class) which school will renew every year in P5 and would adapt at the level of P4 to S1 pupils what Dr Duchêne, who will intervene on 16/05, will say about screen exposure and impact on health.
  2. Intervention in situ par Christophe Axen, directeur adjoint du Regional Computer Crime Unit de la Police Judiciaire Fédérale de Liège sur les problématiques relatives à la cybercriminalité. Tout niveau secondaire (élèves accompagnés de leurs parents). Modalités d’organisation encore à discuter (en conférence en soirée ou interventions dans les classes).
  3. A (in situ) conference for S5 to S7 students, parents and school staff by Louis De Diesbach, 31 year old, author of ""Liker sa servitude"" and of “Bonjour CHATGPT” to present his research and books (philosophical reflexion on the use of technologies, social network and Artificial intelligence), in the Autumn 2024.
  4. Conférence parents/adolescents avec Christophe Bustraen (et éventuellement Anne Labouret co-auteur du 2ème livre cité) in situ avec les élèves de secondaire (la cible principale étant les S1 à S4) avec leurs parents- Janvier-Février 2025. C. B est auteur de « Internet, mes parents, mes profs et moi » et co-auteur de « Parlez du porno à vos enfants avant qu’internet ne le fasse », il est préfet dans un établissement de Wallonie et s’intéresse à ces questions en s’adressant aux jeunes depuis de nombreuses années. C. B. est intervenu deux fois auparavant, invité par l’APEEE. Si C.B. n'était pas disponible, un intervenant similaire, à la fois pédagogue et percutant pour les jeunes, serait recherché.

Conference with Alberto Pellai

The conference will be organised by EEB3 with the participation of the 3 other EEBs. Main objective is to understand the effects of screen on mental health, school education and well being of our teens. To note that Dr Pellai has made an intervention to the european school directors and members of the office du secrétaire général des écoles européennes, gathered in Alicante in April 2024.

Discover the Gifted Profiles: United in Diversity in EEB1

Project submission on behalf of the Gifted Children Network of APEEE.

The aim of the project is to inform parents about the specificity of gifted pupils, which can often be misinterpreted and lead to marginalization/exclusion from the school community.

This goal will be achieved by organising an event (2h-2h30) in October 2024, open to all parents in person with possibility to follow online, where a psychologist (external) will explain the gifted profile(s), how it is different from being very smart, what are the emotional aspects, the challenges gifted pupils face (sometimes leading to dropping out/failing), give examples of specific cases of combined education needs (gifted+ADHD for example), explain the importance of testing and the forms of support available.

The School is invited and can give information about the support provided to parents. The Gifted Children Network of APEEE will briefly give information about its activities.

The presentations will be followed by a Q&A.

The event will be open to all parents, allowing for better understanding of gifted among the wider community of EEB1 (Uccle and Berkendael), and at the same time for early identification if some families recognize their children in the profile.

For the context, the 2020 survey that the GCN performed among parents indicated that there would be around 200 gifted pupils in EEB1 (150 Uccle+50 Berkendael). However, the official numbers are different since many children are not tested.

The GCN strives to support parents, and one of our goals is to foster the understanding of and integration in the community. Children do not wish to be seen as different and families wouldn't like to be singled out when their children are identified as gifted. There is a lot of misconception in the community, as gifted are often wrongly perceived as not having any educational or social challenges. Being high potential/gifted entails an IQ of 130 or more, however not all children with high IQ are gifted, other elements enter into account, such as high ability, task commitment, creativity. Gifted pupils can have different profiles. They can face different challenges, be emotionally and socially not well, be prone to perfectionism/fear of failure (20% of school drop outs are gifted), be disruptive in class, etc. Some mixed profiles can be misdiagnosed and lead to not addressing properly the needs.

Francis Pirotta Creative Arts Prize, 7th Edition

Art competition for students: an annual art competition aimed at primary and nursery classes to celebrate Francis Pirotta's short but creative life and ensure that his spirit and determination remain alive through the creativity of other children. Francis used to spend countless hours drawing. It was by far his favourite pastime and an opening into the world of this remarkable boy with an all-too-short life. The competition is intended to stimulate pupils artistic creativity, with an emphasis on teamwork as the prize is awarded to whole classes. The prize kicked off in 2019, and is split over two categories: Category 1 (MAT, P1, P2) and Category 2 (P3, P4, P5). The theme is chosen by the organising committee, consisting of teachers, APEEE representatives and Francis' parents and may, depending on the subject, also touch upon other objectives covered by the call. the choice of the theme may also contribute to other objectives (e.g. the 2020 and 2023 editions also contributed to environemtnal sustainability) The competition has become a much anticipated event by the primary school community.

Amélioration de la SOFT Room

Il s’agira d’acheter du matériel afin de compléter l’espace permettant aux enfants de maternelle et P1 de se calmer, se poser et apprendre à gérer les émotions.

Un Hamac, des lampes à eau, des coussins, des matelas pour les murs,..: tout ce qu’il fait pour que l’espace soit agréable et permette aux enfants de se trouver dans un espace en sécurité.

The power of folk dance 2.0

Folk dances and folk music are an important source of joy, celebration, good mood and movement. In addition, they offer multiple benefits supporting physical and mental wellbeing of pupils. Mutual understanding and acknowledgment of each other`s cultural value and traditions are all in focus of folk dances.

In the period of February-May 2024, we successfully accomplished The power of folk dance project, financed by APEEE. In the framework of this first project 162 pupils from Uccle Site, representing 6 language sections and 10 classes from P1-P3 cycle, participated in a dance workshop in a rotation system (every class participated 3 times always with another language section together, learning each other’s folk dances - please find supporting documents in attachment).

Taking into consideration the high satisfaction of teachers and pupils involved in the project (please find attached the results of the survey conducted end of April beginning of May), we kindly ask for the support of APEEE to carry on this project in Uccle Site, and potentially extend it equally to the P1-P3 pupils in the Berkendael Site.

The goal of our project is to provide an opportunity for primary pupils of different language sections in P1 to P3 classes, with the help of expert instructors, to get an insight into their own and each other's folk dances and folk music in a playful way.

According to interest, we would distribute the individual classes using a rotation method and would always mix at least two classes from different language sections. According to the results of our survey, we will focus more on putting children of the same age group in the same dance course. For this purpose, from October 2024 until the end of the project, the school's music room and two folk dance instructors would be available on Mondays between 2:15 p.m. and 3:45 p.m., who would welcome the interested P1-P3 classes in the framework of two 45-minute lessons.
Depending on the granted budget and the expressed interest, a part of the classes would be taught on the Berkendael Site. Hence, every interested class would be taught on his own Site, the folk dance teachers are happy to give lessons in Berkendael too on predetermined dates.
The teachers of the given classes would also participate in the supervision of the children and accompany them within the school premises. The planning phase is ongoing with the management and primary level coordinators in Uccle and Berkendael Site too.

Our instructors, Brigitte Langlois (https://farandoledanderlecht.com/) and Veronique Langlois (https://www.vilagfa.be/fr/) are retired teachers with decades of teaching experience, who know the spirit and abilities of primary students, and are able to pass their knowledge and skills to children in an interactive way.

Being active dancers and folk dance teachers, they are masters of dances from France, Germany, Hungary, Great Britain, Greece, Denmark, Italy, Romania, Poland, Belgium and the Czech Republic. Taking into consideration the results of our survey on the first phase project, they are happy to include new dances into the program.
They are able to teach in French, English and Dutch.

The added value of this project is that it supports children's physical and mental well-being and community building. The mixed groups will unite the kids from different nationalities in an inclusive way, sensitizing them to each other's culture, similarities and differences. The project supports and complements the educational program in a playful and joyful way.

Organisational details:

  • Planned group size: maximum 30-35 pupils/group (60 -70 pupils in total/occasion) from different language sections, 2 groups, targeting primary 1-2-3, rotation system
  • Frequency: depending on the granted budget; if the maximum amount of 1500 EUR granted by APEEE, 15 weeks/year, 2 hours (2 groups). In total 30 hours of dancing with a fee of 50 EUR/hour
  • Location: EEB1, Uccle and Berkendael
  • Project manager: Ms Biborka ÁDÁM (adambiborka@gmail.com), APEEE deputy CE in the Hungarian section
  • Responsible teacher from the school: Ms Brigitta HAMIKUS (from Uccle Site) and Mr Fulvio PERONI (from Berkendael Site contacted end of April)

Last update: 27/06/2024