Walter Hövel
D53783 Eitorf Hecke 15 0049 2243 840507 0178 4151316
hoevel.resch@web.de walter.hoevel@web.de
Since 1973 Walter Hövel had worked at a vocational school and at Hauptschule for more than 10 years in Cologne. He had run Grundschule Harmonie in Eitorf from 1996 to 2014. His school had been nominated for the first German „Schulpreis“, certificated as a „European School“, received the „Environmental Prize“ of Rhein-Sieg-Kreis in 2000 and was certificated as a „School For Individual Learning“ several times.
Besides his school leader job he had worked as an university teacher for many years at the Universities of Cologne and Siegen, the University of Riga/Lettland, in the committee for planning the curriculum for learning Englisch at Hauptschulen in NRW (Studienplankommission) and was member of the Central Staff Councill (Hauptpersonalrat des Landes). He was a member of his town’s School Committee and responsible for further education of teachers in the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis Schulamt.
He had been member of the international board of the FIMEM (Féderation Internationale des Mouvements d´Ecole Moderne) and for many years he edited „Fragen und Versuche“, a national teachers magazine.
Together Uschi Resch‘s und Walter Hövel’s schools won the eTwinning-Preis 2010 and they were honoured for their extraordinary work on Comenius projects. They intensively cooperated in school teams for more than 14 years in „Blick-über-den Zaun“, especially on exchanging experiences of modern and international school education.
Still they do seminars on further teachers‘ and educaters‘ training all over the world. They did the Freinet-Curriculum of Bremen and Klagenfurt universities, worked at the German Schools in Ecuador oder did seminars e.g. on the teachers‘ days of vbe and GEW.
Since being retired in 2014 Walter Hövel worked as a referent for teachers‘ training of the German Freinet-Kooperative, the government in Cologne, the University of Bremen, the "International Study Programme in Education“ of the Pedagogical Highschool of Klagenfurt/Austria and the Catholic Pedagogic Highschool in Linz/Austria. Furthermore he is invited by differnt organizers.
Others and him develloped a more than ten years lasting partnership exchanging pupils and teachers with two primary schools in Derbyshire/UK. Since 20014 he works as a lecturer at the TH Cologne.
He publishs aticles in professionell journals and books. He worked with Uschi Resch on a school book and since 2010 they founded and represent their local working group on inclusion.
Walter Hövel stands in for an education demanding autonomy of learning, capacity, taking over responsibility, democracy and inclusion. He fundamentally asks what learning means, which conditions of expension within and out of school it needs.
Walter Hövel realised within the 20 years of existence of the Grundschule Harmonie in Eitorf essential changes and future oriented items of educational praxis:
• Totally self organized and self determined learning of the children
• Introducing a „class council“ (Klassenrat) as the starting point of learning by your own
• Continous presenting your own learning
• Learning by teaching and self evaluation
• Learning and „Leistung“ through intrinsic motivation
• Reports, marks, tests, etc not as means of outer assessment or control
• Installing confirmation of learning success and showing experienced ways“
• Structuring one’s own learner’s personality, self-sufficiency and self-confidence
• Teamwork of teachers to make their own house of learning or school learn
• Local and regional learning in your community, „Education in the village“
• Installing childrens‘ universities as a community of learners and teachers
• Total integration of regular learning and teaching offers by children, teachers, parents, fellow
citizens and experts
• Totally opening for hospitations for your own or future parents, for seminars, staffs,
university education and research, industry, administration and governments
• Cooperation with parents to change learning to a better
• „Bildungspartnerschaft“ or educational partnership of teachers and parents to develope
democracy of learning
• Provoke learning schools, their increase and learning by(!) and with children
• Cooperation with business, foundations, universities and non governmental and European organisations
• National and international cooperation
• Cooperation with family education, kindergardens and lifelong learning
• Theoretical studies and praxis of Freinet-, Montessori-, Reggio-, Bauhaus- and open education
• Studying and accompanying the development of many state and free schools
• Regular and active participating in congresses and meetings all over the world
• Democracy in the classroom and in school, taking part in debates on childrens‘ rights
• Centering childrens‘ councils as a place of planning their own learning
• „Expression libre“ on drama, theatre play, practical arts, writing, telling, mathmatics and sciences
• „methode naturelle“, especially learning languages
• Developement of working, presenting and evaluating techniques
• „Questions to the world“
• Inclusion
• Heterogenity und diversity
• Learning in mixed age groups (1-4)
• „What is learning?“
• Leadership and school development
• Going into unkown ways of learning
• Role distinction and clearness by means of roleplay, psycho drama or Boal theatre
• Learning offers outside of school by free expressing and research. „Meeting the world“
• Development of own models of all-day school
• Healthy breakfast and food as well as a contense of living together
• Printing in school
• Playing chest
• Developping a culture of celebrations and games
• Raising a strong will for learning and heading for success
• 30 years of contributions to teachers‘ education in research and training
• Debating school architecture
• Intensive dealing with childrens‘, adults‘ and family psychology
• Arrangement in learning by designing rooms, houses and area of schools or learning places
• Experiences with the education of study workshops or better „Lernwerkstätten“
• Special experiences and visits of education in other countries like Austria, the Switzerlands,
Italy, the UK, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, France, Portugal, Finland, Estland, Croatia,
Slovania, Latvia, Japan, Canada, Ecuador, …
• Stressing musical education
• Systemic view on children and their learning
• Transfer of organisition and systemic experiences from business into school life
• Building up childrens‘ parliaments
• Diverse works on „Free Writing“ in German and English
• Dealing with family and neighbours‘ dialects and languages
• Getting to know the life and thinking of Sinti families
• Experiences with children of migrants and refugees
• Reading and its anchoring in childrens‘ life
• Know how of media and computers
• Taking part in teachers‘ training in its first and second phase
• Building up centers of science learning
• Establishing rooms for meeting practical arts, nature or forests, movement, science, music,
theatre or drama, languages, …
• Promotions of gifted pupils (Begabtenförderung)
• Development of communication
• „Lernenlernen“
• Learning times instead of homeworks
• School magazines
• 20 years of realising modern learning in a rural conservative surroundings
• Cancel traditional time tables supporting holistic learning to reintroduce subjects
• Set priority to qualitiy of subjects‘ knowledge
• Working with generated subjects‘ didactics
• Learning in and with prepared and naturall learning environments
• Stimulate and postulate learning
• Learning in social cooperation
• Bilingual learning
• Learning without teacher
• Aesthetic and imagination learning
• Planning and steering of situative learning at will
• Expert conferences on Inclusion, Democracy or Learning in the Region
• Cooperation with several parts of the university of Siegen (teachers‘ training, research of
education, inclusion and social work
More:
www.walter-hoevel.de