Despite the overwhelming allocation of media time to issues concerning refugees and other newcomers to Europe, it is easy for people involved directly in efforts to educate and otherwise integrate these people within local communities to feel isolated in their endeavours. As teachers at the Schule des Zweiten Bildungsweges Dahme-Spreewald near Berlin involved in teaching a small but growing number of foreign students from a diverse range of nationalities, it was really only last December when a group of teachers from Oslo Voksenopplæring Sinsen visited our school that we came to realise that we are not alone in our goal to finding better ways to involve and integrate newcomers from other countries to our local society. Our visitors from Oslo provided us with a very helpful description of problems and other issues they face on a daily basis concerning many of their adult education course students, both locals and foreigners. Just as importantly, the staff from Oslo Voksenopplæring Sinsen described their methods and other approaches to addressing these issues and how they are involved in on-going assessment,evaluation and improvement of their ground-breaking work as a school in the metropolitan Oslo area where 80% of their clientele comes from overseas directly or an overseas background, making language learning a key issue to be tackled day in day out.The number of students who are foreign-born or whose parents are foreign-born continues to rise. Common issues for both local and foreign students include maintaining motivation and working out exactly what they want to do and can realistically achieve while at school with us and thereafter in a career or further study. The process can end up taking longer than originally anticipated. We need to revise or begin with basic alphabet skills, then spelling and numeracy before joining all this together with basic computer skills to help prepare students for work outside. Working together on resumés is one example of how we have found a way to couple newly won abilities with self-awareness of those and other talents which then helps the individual student to see what really matters and how they can begin to take ownership of their own education and personal development. By concentrating on recent positive experiences, students build confidence to think, speak and write for and about themselves. They can finally move on from earlier negative occurrences. In this way, we are helping to rebuild young lives.In order to be flexible in our multiple approaches to re-educating young people, we have found that being open to new concepts and practices which achieve better results can only help both our staff and students. To develop better thinking and speaking skills, so that young people can learn to be confident about what they see, read, hear and feel is right, and therefore are less prone to be radicalised or otherwise fall in with ‘the wrong crowd’, we are keen to explore the opportunities provided by ‘thinking tools’. In this sense, our three schools in Norway, Germany and Spain are focused on achieving best teaching practices in adult second-chance education. Our previous programs with other schools in Europe have concentrated on teaching methods involving information technology (IT), the broadening of curriculum activities and support structures, including assessment and accreditation. This experience has only shown how direct communication with other institutions abroad is of crucial importance to our ultimate short and long term goals of helping our adult students.