Jerónimo Emiliano de Andrade Secondary School has been recognized with the 2026 European Innovative Teaching Award for an Erasmus+ project that brought together students, teachers and UNESCO Global Geoparks across four European countries, transforming geology, environmental responsibility and digital learning into a shared experience.
Sometimes education begins when the classroom walls disappear. A stone becomes a page, a fossil becomes a question, a volcanic landscape becomes a book written over millions of years. That idea lies at the heart of “EMME – Exchanging Memories, Memory of the Earth,” the Erasmus+ project that has earned Escola Secundária Jerónimo Emiliano de Andrade, on Terceira, a 2026 European Innovative Teaching Award.
Developed between October 1, 2023 and September 30, 2025, EMME brought the Terceira school together with Liceul Teoretic “Avram Iancu” in Brad, Romania, which coordinated the project; Zakladna Skola Hutnicka 16 in Spišská Nová Ves, Slovakia; and Osnovna Škola Pantovčak in Zagreb, Croatia. The Azores UNESCO Global Geopark and Romania’s Hațeg UNESCO Global Geopark were also partners, allowing students to encounter the Earth’s history not simply through textbooks, but through the landscapes in which that history remains visible.
The premise was particularly contemporary. Teachers observed that young people were increasingly connected to technology while often becoming more disconnected from the natural environment surrounding them. EMME attempted to bring those worlds together rather than treating them as opposites. Geoscience, culture and sustainability were combined with digital tools, experiential learning and international collaboration, turning geoparks into outdoor classrooms and encouraging students to understand how human actions affect landscapes whose history vastly precedes our own.
One participating student from Jerónimo Emiliano de Andrade captured that transformation beautifully: “EMME made me look at nature differently.” A rock, hill, fossil or old stone building could now provoke another question: what story is hidden here? That shift in perception may be one of education’s most important achievements. Knowledge becomes more than information remembered for an examination; it changes the way a person looks at the world.
The project also developed practical “skills for life,” the theme of the 2026 European Innovative Teaching Award. Students worked on environmental literacy, scientific curiosity, critical thinking, teamwork, digital storytelling and intercultural cooperation. Teachers, meanwhile, expanded their use of digital technologies, interdisciplinary methods and inclusive educational practices. Among the project’s lasting resources are the #EMME Curriculum, a mobile application and video documentaries created by students—materials designed to remain useful beyond the formal conclusion of the Erasmus+ partnership.
There is particular significance in an Azorean school receiving recognition for a project centered on the “Memory of the Earth.” Few European regions offer young people a more immediate lesson in geological time than the Azores. Volcanoes, calderas, cliffs, lava fields and geothermal landscapes make visible the forces that created the islands and continue to shape them. EMME transformed that natural inheritance into educational responsibility: understanding how the Earth was formed becomes inseparable from asking how it should now be protected.
And perhaps that is the quiet achievement behind the award. EMME did not ask students merely to memorize the history of the planet. It invited them to recognize themselves within it.
A young person looks at a stone and begins to wonder what happened there before us. From that question comes science. From understanding comes responsibility. And from responsibility may come precisely the kind of European citizen the project hoped to help form—curious enough to read the memory of the Earth, and conscious enough to understand that one day, our own actions will become part of what the Earth remembers.
Based on a story in Atlântico Expresso. Phot from the school’s Facebook Page.