Stetten a.k.M. school centre receives coveted award

The community school is a certified secondary school with a focus on sport and physical education.

By Annemarie Ziegler

Exercise in everyday school life has been a major priority at the school centre in Stetten am kalten Markt for years. Here, the school community lives by the credo that no successful learning can take place in the mind if physical well-being is not provided at the same time. For this reason, a steering group of committed colleagues, together with Konrektor Jürgen Lebherz, worked for two years to professionalise the institution's movement education focus and participated in the GSB/WSB-Schule initiative. Since this year, the school can look forward to a five-year award.

Headmaster Klaus Flockerzie is particularly proud of this, because it was he who initiated the "Bewegte Schule" project in Baden-Württemberg back in 1996 on behalf of the then Minister of Education, Dr Marianne Schultz-Hector, together with retired headmaster Hartmut Schrenk, and filled it with content. "It is nice to see," says Flockerzie, "that the tender plant "Bewegte Schule" has become a firmly established school concept" that has made schools better and, above all, more child-friendly throughout Germany .In addition to training executive functions, movement education forms holistic learning with all the senses and reduces behavioural difficulties through physical compensation. Moreover, the alternation between movement activities, learning phases and integrated rest breaks the monotony of a long school day.

The steering group with teachers Andrea Ruda, Maria Montalbano, Sandra Späth and Kathrin Spröder quickly succeeded in getting the approval of the school's internal committees for the two-year project. Then an internal school training series on the WSB building blocks started: "Not only we as the steering group, but also the entire teaching staff were taught contents of moving lessons," Andrea Ruda tells us. "Within the various workshops, the colleagues were trained how to integrate movement into their lessons," Ruda continues. "We also had great fun: the teachers practised the forms of play and learning themselves as pupils, sometimes giggling like their pupils." Afterwards, they discussed together why it makes sense to design lesson content in a moving way. Finally, the project was fixed through the elaboration and implementation of a school documentation.

Best location factors

The school centre has the best on-site conditions for a wide range of sports activities. In the midst of an extensive green area, there is a three-section sports hall with adjacent artificial turf and basketball court, an indoor swimming pool in the immediate vicinity as well as a gym that may be used for inclination sports through the cooperation with TSV Stetten a.k.M.. Likewise, the German Armed Forces, as an extracurricular partner, offers the school centre cooperation opportunities for physical education. Sports with a fun factor are possible at the playground opposite the school centre, which also provides a beach volleyball court and ramps for inline skates.

Besondere personelle Unterstützung erfährt das WSB-Konzept durch den Sportpädagogen Julio Becerra, der an der Universität Santiago de Chile ausgebildet wurde. Inhaltlich werden im Schuljahr feste Pflichtveranstaltungen wie der Wintersporttag, die Bundesjugendspiele, Skiausfahrten und erlebnispädagogische Bausteine auf Lerngruppenfahrten integriert. Neu hinzugekommen sind ausgeschilderte Bewegungsplätze, auf denen die Schulsportmentoren die Arbeit der Lehrkräfte unterstützen und für die Lernpartner wichtige Vorbilder sind.

On the way to a moving school

One of the biggest challenges was to create learning spaces that are suitable for physical activity, because not all school rooms offer the optimal conditions for this. In the future, the concept of "park and walk" The school route of the learning partners should be consciously integrated as a movement profile and help to avoid parents chauffeuring their offspring to the front door.

"The effort has paid off," Maria Montalbano sums up. "Above all, meditative quiet phases are very well accepted and create a learning-friendly atmosphere. In addition, the social behaviour within the learning group is clearly promoted when people interact more with each other and the sports mentors share responsibility for the learning group."

The new certificate now officially attests to what insiders have known for some time: 
this is an excellent school!