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Helmut Klemm: We were looking for new ideas. We knew we wanted to change the Eichendorffschule, but we didn't know how. We had few role models in Bavaria to follow in our school development, because the system there is highly hierarchical and fixated on grammar schools. So we had to look outside Bavaria for inspiration, and that's how we came across the job shadowing program.

We chose the Robert Bosch Comprehensive School in Hildesheim. We weren't looking for a specific concept, but rather for a school that faces similar challenges and has a large portfolio of innovative approaches. At first glance, a Bavarian middle school doesn't seem to have much in common with an integrated comprehensive school, but dealing with a diverse student body is particularly important for both types of schools.

Overwhelming because the school was so different from ours. There are 1,500 students, so there are a lot of activities and special features. We didn't go there with a specific goal in mind; we just took it all in and kept our eyes and ears open. The impressions were incredibly varied. The sheer size was impressive, the huge auditorium, I remember a terrarium with reptiles, or a project in the Jewish cemetery near the school where the students tried to find descendants of the deceased. At the same time, we also saw very mundane things that showed us that things weren't so great for them, and that things weren't so bad for us at our school. This was also motivating because it confirmed our own actions. It's important to go out and compare.

Yes, we did. For example, when I attended the school board meeting, there was talk of a pedagogical-didactic committee. I found this very exciting because it was a new way of involving teachers in school development processes. Later we established a similar committee in our school. Of course, it was a little different, adapted to our needs.

It is about going along, experiencing and immersing oneself in a wide range of situations, and not about showing off particularly great achievements.Openness and time are important, because that's how you come across things you might not have considered before. For example, two of our colleagues once visited the Heinz-Brandt School in Berlin as part of the job shadowing program; their original focus was art education. They came back with a new approach to team time and peer observation that we adapted.

It's a long process. It's not a case of seeing an idea and implementing it in your own school a week later. For example, we first had to find resources for team time and structures, which are not provided for in the Bavarian system in addition to class time. Together we decided to take an hour away from the students. The team time now takes place on Mondays from 8 to 9 a.m. and is mandatory for all colleagues; the students are allowed to start an hour later that day. There is supervision for the younger students. We sought support for peer observation and then implemented it as part of a year-long guided program. We are now a step ahead, the teams are established and working well. We no longer want to do individual observations, but to develop the concept further. Colleagues want to observe other teams in teams.