"Teaching is the beginning of all evil!" This conviction of the former head of the Alemannenschule Wutöschingen, Stefan Ruppaner, is also reflected in the school concept of the Nordsee-Campus Wilhelmshaven (NCW). In this impulse offer, you will gain an insight into the school's special teaching and learning concept.
Here, pupils learn in a self-organised way at personalised learning spaces, according to their own interests and at their own pace. From Year 7 onwards, there are no more traditional lessons and basically no traditional teachers, and from Year 9 onwards, classrooms and classes have also disappeared. Results so far: good school climate, little violence, peace and quiet - and the pupils learn because (not although!) they don't have lessons led by teachers.

• What influence does the school concept have on the development of the pupils and the educational work within the school community?
• What advantages have developed from this way of working for the school as a whole and for the learners in particular?
• What are the key conditions for success?

Based on practical experience, this impulse programme invites you to discuss your own experiences of shaping teaching and learning and to exchange views on implementation goals and approaches.

THOMAS SCHMACKER has been working as a teacher since 2000 and as a vice headmaster and planning group leader at a secondary school since 2010. In 2020, he took over as head of the planning group for the new Nordsee-Campus Wilhelmshaven secondary school, where he has been headmaster since 2021.

School development depends on HOW! Because how can sustainable, jointly supported, creatively thinking school development be initiated and filled with life?
Design Thinking also understands schools as a designable development space. At the centre are the needs of learners, teachers and all other school stakeholders, which are specifically identified and incorporated into school development processes. Collaboration within the teaching staff and the step-by-step testing and further development of ideas result in practical, jointly designed solutions that can be implemented in everyday school life. Design Thinking thus promotes a culture of learning and working together and supports schools in developing ideas in a targeted manner despite limited time, in order to consciously utilise school freedom and actively shape school development.
What can you expect?

• In just 90 minutes of this impulse programme, you will go through a condensed design thinking process in the Idea Sprint - from quick brainstorming to the first prototype. This interactive workshop specifically activates your innovative strength and shows you how to develop practical solutions for typical challenges in everyday school and teaching life in a short space of time.
• The Ideas Sprint is particularly suitable for teachers and school management teams who want to try out new forms of collaboration and actively shape change processes. This makes the sprint not only a creative impulse, but also an accompanying process for sustainable school development - in the spirit of design thinking.

JOACHIM OEST is the founder and managing director of the Deichdenker Institute for Contemporary Education and Innovation in Weener (East Frisia). As an expert in innovative teaching and learning formats, he offers workshops on design thinking in the classroom and in school development, on digitalisation in schools and on alternative examination formats. He is also a sought-after keynote speaker, lecturer and author. Joachim Oest currently teaches part-time at the Michaelschule secondary school in Papenburg. Previously, he worked for many years as a subject leader in teacher training at the Staatliches Studienseminar für Realschulen in Mainz.

Since 2013, the Kreidestaubinitiative has been bringing together committed students who want to change schools. As a Germany-wide network of students studying to become teachers, educational science and pedagogy, we see ourselves as a testing ground for the schools of tomorrow. We connect, motivate and inspire – through projects that demonstrate how professional pedagogy can be put into practice and learnt.
In this presentation, we introduce two project formats that have become successfully established and which can serve as a basis for schools’ processes of reflection and development.

• As part of the ‘Learning Journey’, teacher training students across the country set out each year on a self-organised trip to explore schools that are particularly innovative and have been recognised for their development work, and to learn from them.
• ‘Let’s play Schule’ is an educational project format in which trainee teachers take over the teaching of a class – or even an entire school – for a week. This allows the students to gain genuine practical experience outside the traditional examination setting and to learn how to deliver lessons creatively. And teachers can use this time, for example, to visit other schools and work on their own school’s development.

We have brought together key insights and experiences from both project formats for you and would like to reflect with you on the scope for innovation they offer.

FANNY KUNCZAK studied Political Education and French to become a teacher in Berlin. She completed her teaching placement there at a so-called ‘high-needs school’. She is a board member of the initiative Kreidestaub e.V., which acts as a voice in education policy, advocates for improvements in teacher training and, amongst other things, organises study visits to innovative schools to explore the question of what constitutes a ‘good’ school.

How can schools create genuine space for self-organised learning, hand over responsibility to pupils and, at the same time, strategically drive forward school development?
FREI DAY is a project-based learning format that empowers pupils to engage with current societal challenges and develop viable solutions independently. Working in mixed-age teams, they learn in a self-organised, practical and participatory way.
In this session, Christina Feldmann (headteacher of Bothmer Primary School in Schwarmstedt) and Laura Blum (Initiative Schule im Aufbruch) provide insights into the practical implementation of FREI DAY in primary schools. They speak openly about their experiences, challenges and the conditions for success, and demonstrate how school leaders can get the initiative off the ground and embed this freedom sustainably within their own schools. This session invites you to gain new perspectives on learning, responsibility and school development – and to develop concrete next steps for your own everyday school life.

CHRISTINA FELDMANN is headteacher at Bothmer Primary School, where FREI DAY has been in place for five years.

LAURA BLUM, as coordinator of ‘Schule im Aufbruch’ for the north, advises schools on their journey towards FREI DAY and their path to holistic transformation in the spirit of a whole-school approach.

Democratic societies need democratic schools. But how does a democratic development process succeed with all participants who are expected to fulfil their tasks and roles in everyday life?
The concept for democratic school development developed by Dorothea Schütze at IDE Berlin explicitly focuses on this challenge of restructuring a moving train with all participants: inclusive, sustainable, critical of power and discrimination. This impulse programme takes you on a journey through the following questions:

• How do we make democratic decision-making processes transparent and fair?
• How do we promote genuine participation - for pupils and colleagues, but also for parents or technical and cleaning staff?
• What does it take to become active independently using the school's resources and when do we need professional external process support?

At the centre of this is a constructive examination of one's own attitude and role in the school development process. Tried and tested methods, collegial exchange and impulses from theory and practice provide orientation for concrete development steps at your own school.

LYNN HENRY KÖNIG is a political educator and process facilitator with the approaches and basic attitude of democratic school development (according to the concept of the Institute for Democracy Development Berlin), Betzavta, mediation and Gestalt therapy. He teaches at the University of Bremen, the PH Freiburg and the LIS Bremen and is doing his doctorate on conflicts in democratic school development processes.

How more open space in the classroom helps to create scope for independent learning. Taking the example of the learning space based on the Churer model in Year I (class of Year 5) at the Herderschule grammar school in Lüneburg, this workshop offers insights into how classrooms can be redesigned and used to open up more scope for independent, individual work, whilst at the same time ensuring guidance and reliability.
The Churer Model, developed by Reto Thöny, offers a tried-and-tested framework combining freedom, responsibility and structure to develop learning environments – including at grammar schools – in a way that integrates academic progress, self-regulated learning and well-being. Designing school spaces to act as a ‘third teacher’ places the focus on pupils’ learning and lives, and transforms the understanding of the roles of both teachers and pupils. The aim of the Chur Model is for pupils to become ‘experts in their own learning’. Fostering individual potential becomes easier, whilst at the same time the sense of community is greatly enhanced through the circle seating arrangement and collaboration zones.
Combining our perspectives as school management and the teachers involved, we invite you to join us in a discussion about the development of the pilot project at the Herderschule and the observed effects on pupils and teachers. We will share with you the opportunities and limitations, the conditions for success and the challenges, so that we can discuss together how the Churer model can be integrated into existing school structures – including at grammar schools.

THORSTEN SCHNELL is headteacher and teaches English and Russian as subjects at the Herderschule grammar school in Lüneburg.

DR SELMA POLAT-MENKE is a teacher at the Herderschule grammar school in Lüneburg; she holds a PhD in Theology (Religious Education), is a lecturer in mindfulness at Leuphana University, and is the author of the mindfulness programme ‘Herzbeschirmt’.

STEFAN MATTHEUS is a teacher of politics, economics and geography, and the coordinator for academic and career guidance at the Herderschule grammar school in Lüneburg.

In this impulse programme, the Flötenteich Integrated Comprehensive School provides insights into its comprehensive transformation process with the aim of rethinking education and actively shaping society. It describes the path to a fundamentally changed school concept that anchors education for sustainable development (ESD) as a central guiding principle. The starting point was the realisation that traditional subject structures and teaching formats are not sufficient to prepare pupils for a globalised world shaped by sustainability issues. Accordingly, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as a guide for skills development.
One focus is on developing a curriculum that links subjects and is geared towards the subject-specific, interdisciplinary and personal skills that young people need to actively participate in society. Subject content is consistently understood as a means of acquiring skills and dealing with future issues.
At the same time, the organisation of lessons was redesigned: Time and space freedoms allow for individual learning paths, project-based learning and co-operation with extracurricular partners. Since the 2024/25 school year, the timetable for years 5 to 10 has mainly consisted of free learning and group times, supplemented by digitally provided learning content. Teachers accompany the learning processes as learning coaches.
You will receive transparent insights into the challenges and, in our view, particularly effective success factors of our school transformation and an outlook on our further development steps.

HANNELORE LÜLLWITZ has been Head of the integrated comprehensive school since 2016, prior to which she was Deputy Head of School for eleven years.

DR. GUNTHER WIEKING has been a science and maths teacher at IGS Flötenteich since 2006 and the school's head of teaching since 2012.

School and teaching development is a field of tension between individual teachers and the teaching staff, as well as the specialised and didactic challenges. The resulting complexity is an obstacle to the implementation of new learning formats, as it can lead to excessive demands and uncertainty among the teaching staff. School headmasters are given a central role in overcoming this complexity. Change management involves changes to the organisational structure of the school; in particular, forms of participation are an indispensable part of a changed organisation.
This impulse offer gives you an insight into the transformation from the classic school and teaching model to autonomous and individualised learning using the example of the Damme secondary modern school.

• It outlines how the complex challenges were tackled in a small-scale, participatory and solution-orientated manner. The focus is placed on the work of the steering group, as participation, organisation and steering can only be implemented by a group as a medium for the change process.
• Using a developed project planning, you will receive practical impulses on how to change fundamental patterns of attitude and behaviour in the college.

JAN RUNGE has been headteacher of Damme secondary school since 2013 and previously held various positions at the school, in particular as deputy headteacher. He completed the Master's programme "School Management and Quality Development.

"Teaching is the beginning of all evil!" This conviction of the former head of the Alemannenschule Wutöschingen, Stefan Ruppaner, is also reflected in the school concept of the Nordsee-Campus Wilhelmshaven (NCW). In this impulse offer, you will gain an insight into the school's special teaching and learning concept.
Here, pupils learn in a self-organised way at personalised learning spaces, according to their own interests and at their own pace. From Year 7 onwards, there are no more traditional lessons and basically no traditional teachers, and from Year 9 onwards, classrooms and classes have also disappeared. Results so far: good school climate, little violence, peace and quiet - and the pupils learn because (not although!) they don't have lessons led by teachers.

• What influence does the school concept have on the development of the pupils and the educational work within the school community?
• What advantages have developed from this way of working for the school as a whole and for the learners in particular?
• What are the key conditions for success?

Based on practical experience, this impulse programme invites you to discuss your own experiences of shaping teaching and learning and to exchange views on implementation goals and approaches.

THOMAS SCHMACKER has been working as a teacher since 2000 and as a vice headmaster and planning group leader at a secondary school since 2010. In 2020, he took over as head of the planning group for the new Nordsee-Campus Wilhelmshaven secondary school, where he has been headmaster since 2021.

School development depends on HOW! Because how can sustainable, jointly supported, creatively thinking school development be initiated and filled with life?
Design Thinking also understands schools as a designable development space. At the centre are the needs of learners, teachers and all other school stakeholders, which are specifically identified and incorporated into school development processes. Collaboration within the teaching staff and the step-by-step testing and further development of ideas result in practical, jointly designed solutions that can be implemented in everyday school life. Design Thinking thus promotes a culture of learning and working together and supports schools in developing ideas in a targeted manner despite limited time, in order to consciously utilise school freedom and actively shape school development.
What can you expect?

• In just 90 minutes of this impulse programme, you will go through a condensed design thinking process in the Idea Sprint - from quick brainstorming to the first prototype. This interactive workshop specifically activates your innovative strength and shows you how to develop practical solutions for typical challenges in everyday school and teaching life in a short space of time.
• The Ideas Sprint is particularly suitable for teachers and school management teams who want to try out new forms of collaboration and actively shape change processes. This makes the sprint not only a creative impulse, but also an accompanying process for sustainable school development - in the spirit of design thinking.

JOACHIM OEST is the founder and managing director of the Deichdenker Institute for Contemporary Education and Innovation in Weener (East Frisia). As an expert in innovative teaching and learning formats, he offers workshops on design thinking in the classroom and in school development, on digitalisation in schools and on alternative examination formats. He is also a sought-after keynote speaker, lecturer and author. Joachim Oest currently teaches part-time at the Michaelschule secondary school in Papenburg. Previously, he worked for many years as a subject leader in teacher training at the Staatliches Studienseminar für Realschulen in Mainz.

How can schools create genuine scope for self-organised learning, hand over responsibility to pupils and, at the same time, strategically drive forward school development?
FREI DAY is a project-based learning format that empowers pupils to engage with current societal challenges and develop viable solutions independently. Working in mixed-age teams, they adopt a self-organised, practical and participatory approach.
In this session, Christian Diekmann (deputy headteacher at Georgsmarienhütte Secondary School) and Laura Blum (Schule im Aufbruch initiative) provide insights into the practical implementation of FREI DAY from both a school-based and a conceptual perspective. They will share their experiences, the challenges they have faced and best practices, and demonstrate how school leaders can use FREI DAY as a lever for the sustainable development of freedom within the school. This session invites you to gain new perspectives on learning, responsibility and school development – and to develop concrete next steps for your own everyday school life.

CHRISTIAN DIEKMANN is deputy headteacher at Georgsmarienhütte Secondary School, where FREI DAY has been in place for three years.

There are no development processes without resistance. But what exactly is behind resistance, what does it trigger in yourself and others and how do you deal with it at management level? This impulse offer focuses on all these resistance dynamics in school development processes and analyses "resistance as the normality" of change.
Based on "structural persistence" and the tendency to form camps, various patterns of resistance, their rational foundations and supposedly irrational forms of expression are analysed system(at)ically. Based on the assumption that resistance can be constructively transformed in participation processes, scope for democratisation is presented in the form of active democratic school development.
This impulse offer provides you with the opportunity to take away suggestions for the (further) development of practice-oriented strategies for dealing constructively with resistance through the recognition of coded messages, dialogue and negotiation. You will explore your own resistance and develop concrete perspectives for action for your school contexts.

LYNN HENRY KÖNIG is a political educator and process facilitator with the approaches and basic attitude of democratic school development (according to the concept of the Institute for Democracy Development Berlin), Betzavta, mediation & Gestalt therapy. He teaches at the University of Bremen, the PH Freiburg and the LIS Bremen and is doing his doctorate on conflicts in democratic school development processes.

The German school system is facing the challenge of improving the quality of education, even though human resources are scarce and teachers are stretched to the limit. The current strategy of "more is better" will therefore not work in the future.

• How can schools stop doing what doesn't work?
• How can pointless school practices be reduced or eliminated?
• How can schools say goodbye to bureaucracy, superfluous activities, but also to cherished routines?
• And how can teachers get time back to spend on what is really important?

In this impulse programme, you will receive answers to these questions as well as practical and well-founded inspiration on how schools can become better by focusing on "less" instead of "more". The aim is to reconcile quality improvement and academic appointments and to find ways to harmonise effective school development with keeping teachers healthy. The idea is actually quite simple: Better less - but less better!
- Lecture via live link -

DR. HABIL. BENEDIKT WISNIEWSKI is a school psychologist, supervisor and coach and works at the Upper Palatinate School Counselling Centre. He has many years of experience as a teacher and as a teacher trainer and has focussed his research and practice on the topic of feedback in the school context. As a specialist book author and host of the podcast "Psychology for the classroom", he imparts psychological knowledge in a practical and understandable way for schools and lessons.

School development under challenging conditions requires clarity, courage and manageable solutions!
This impulse programme provides an insight into the establishment and development of Walliser Straße primary school in Bremen-Osterholz-Tenever, which was founded in 2022 under challenging conditions. Oliver Leimbach uses concrete examples to show how existing freedom at management level was used to strengthen self-efficacy, motivation and reliability for staff and pupils.
In a combination of theoretical orientation (salutogenesis according to Antonovsky, school development according to Burow, Chur model) with consistently practical experiences from everyday school life, both successful strategies and stumbling blocks are discussed. You will receive concrete suggestions on how to set priorities even under difficult conditions, how to enable participation and how to make targeted use of free space for health-promoting and learning-effective school development.

OLIVER LEIMBACH is the headteacher of Walliser Straße primary school in Bremen, which he founded together with a colleague in 2022. He has been working in school management roles since 2010. His heart beats for creating a school that is as healthy and lively as possible as a whole school community.

Even before the inflationary use of the term "Freiräume", BBS Lingen Wirtschaft had already begun to develop, formulate and implement a new mission statement and the resulting new school programme, taking advantage of the available freedom in terms of content. Under the guiding concepts of learning, digitality and responsibility, the self-determination of learners is anchored as the core of the pedagogical self-image. Our school created the necessary environment for this by transforming general classrooms into new learning spaces that were specially designed and remodelled for self-determined learning.
Our impulse offer gives you insights into the key steps and challenges of implementation at BBS Lingen Wirtschaft and offers you food for thought and encouraging impulses for thinking more freely about and successfully implementing freedom for your own school development processes.

HEINZ GEBBEKEN has been working at BBS Lingen Wirtschaft for 25 years and has been head of the school since 2020. From the very beginning, it has been important to him to leave the narrow paths imposed by the system and to utilise possible open spaces to create a lively school.

UWE FÖGEDING is the permanent deputy headmaster of BBS Lingen Wirtschaft and is responsible for quality management and the school development process, among other things. For him, BBS Lingen Wirtschaft must become a place of learning in which the (individual) student is at the centre of everything we do. For him, school development is more than just utilising open spaces.