The primary aim of the project is to enhance the understanding and foster tolerance of the pupils in the participating schools for other countries in general, and more specifically for other cultures, religious believes and diverse backgrounds. The project should raise the pupils’ awareness of the socio-economic changes that are currently taking place within the Europe and enhance their intercultural understanding. Further, the project is aimed to foster social integration of children from less advantaged backgrounds, such as children living in low-income single-parent households and refugee children as well as comprehensive inclusion of disabled children. Both schools will work together and exchange their practices how to include disabled children and socially integrate children from less advantaged backgrounds. The project is also designed to help our pupils, but also the refugee children which we wish to support in our project, to better understand the common humanistic European values on which the European Union is build on.Lastly, we want to exchange ideas and know-how and discuss experiences with our partner school on how to teach pupils in two languages outside the classic foreign language lectures. The language education of the pupils at ‘Freie Montessori Schule’ is based on an open concept, where children already start learning English in the first grade with the focus on an early development of oral foreign language skills. The language education at the Europa School UK follows a bilingual approach where part of the curriculum is taught in English and part of it in German (or French). An exchange of know-how and experiences with our partner school should enable us to learn and employ new teaching techniques to teach English more effectively. Likewise, the exchange of know-how and applied practices should enable our partner school to enhance their skills and competences to teach German as a second language. Two schools participate in the school partnership. ‘Freie Montessori Schule’, Altach is a private comprehensive school with more than 160 pupils from diverse social backgrounds attending the school. Our teaching is based on the principles of Maria Montessori and we have also integrated children with special needs. ‘Europa School UK’, Culham is an all-ability state-funded ‘free school’ that offers a bilingual European education in either English and German or English and French. The school is an Accredited European School which offers the European Baccalaureate from 2017 onwards.We will enter into various activities in order to achieve the objectives outlined above. In the course of the project, children of both schools will participate in three project weeks (one project week each year) which each project week having a specific topic as a theme (for example: ‘Discrimination and exclusion based on cultural or religious differences, on disability, on the socio-economic background, on gender – how can we prevent this at our school?’, ‘Children refugees in Europe – how can we help?’, ‘Human rights under in the European Convention of Human Rights’). In preparation of these project weeks, the pupils of both schools will exchange their thoughts on how to organise the project week, for example by way of video conferences or phone conferences. They will present their ideas to each other and agree on activities that they want to undertake together during the project week and which will fit the specific theme. In addition to the ideas of the pupils, practical activities will have been prepared by the teachers of both schools beforehand in order to allow a successful completion of each project week.We believe that it is of mutual benefit that an Accredited European school, which provides children with specific bilingual training, and a Montessori school, which integrates both children with special abilities and talents and disabled children, will work closely together in the course of this project and beyond as we can exchange our different good practices and learn from each other. We trust that the impact of this project will go beyond the pupils and parents of our schools and that we can help with our project to sustainably integrate local refugee children in our society and enhance the mutual understanding and respect.
The main objectives of our project was to raise tolerance and achieve awareness towards people of diverse cultures and religions, within the face of a changing Europe and at the same time pass on an understanding of the common humanistic European values. We have attempted to raise awareness and inclusion towards, children of disadvantaged backgrounds due to socio economic circumstances e.g. low-single parent incomes, children with refuge status and children with disabilities. The formally participating organizations were the Freie Montessori Schule in Altach and the Europe School UK in Culham. We have involved a number of organizations to achieve and enrich our project. Through this informally participating organizations were able to provide our pupils with experiences through play, dance, touch and hands on personal involvement warranting a long-lasting impression and long term benefits. Great emphasis was placed to include the project topics into the regular curriculum, due to the anticipated time and planing efforts required. The topic „living in a world of cultural diversity“ was worked on in an overlapping of curricular subjects such as geograpy and biology. Students were exposed to concepts such as global management and distribution of resources. Furthermore, students obtained knowledge about existing conflicts and wars, dealing with topics like migration, immigaration, refuges and asylum. The lives and roles of women in different societies and economic circumstances and Malala Yousafzai. Additionaly the legal rights and obligations of children were dealt with. The "Vorarlberger Landesmuseum", the "Kunsthaus" in Bregenz as well as theater play in Vienna were a great way to use art and play as a tool to create a long lasting impression of said topics in our students. During English lessons "Rob and the Hoodies" - a play dealing with the issue of bullying -was read by the students and afterwards the students watched the „Viennas English theater“ perform the play. Disscusion and art was used to gain insight knowledge and to get experiences. Teachers undertook teacher training with Helle Jensen to strenghten their relational competence, their presence, awareness and empathy and how they can bring equal dignity, respect and tolerance into the classroom. We wrote and performed a play about democracy and human rights under the management of Ms Brigitte Walk. The play was performed and watched in the local community creating awareness and long lasting impression. It was also a part of the newspaper "Kultur" which is well known in our area and that issue was handed out for free to every household in Vorarlberg. Lots of smaller activities have taken place during the school year to be aware of our Erasmus+ topic during the whole school year. All these undertaken activities have left a great impression on students, teachers and parents alike. An experience know one will ever forget. All the bigger activities are also described on the homepage and in the annual newspaper of the school, which are passed out to the major of the town, to all the parents and students and also political and cultural parties of the county. The content of the project was spread out widely every year. Furthermore we had regular articles in the monthly newsletter of the school to keep parents updated.