Our project called YOU ON MY MIND is conducted by six middle schools from the Czech Republic, Poland, Finland, Greece, Croatia and Germany and aims at students who are aged 13-18. It deals with two main concepts: tolerance and courage as these issues have become more and more important in modern Europe. The project has a theoretical and practical part. Within the first part students will research and present tolerant and courageous people/acts of their countries while the second part focuses on learning by doing, enabling students exchange of their ideas, presentations, knowledge. The cooperation between schools will be conducted at personal, educational, social and international levels. E-Twinning platform will be the main tool used in the interaction between schools and teachers (a special project group called You on My Mind has already been established). Apart from online cooperation, the participants will get the chance to meet each other during 6 project meetings - each one hosted by one of the partner schools and consisting of 5 working days filled with various project activities and 2 days for travelling (arrival and departure). We definitely want to take more than 100 participants in total to the project meetings. We are determined to deal with the budget provided by the EU very wisely to save up money in order to enable more pupils and teachers to participate in the meetings. Our plan counts with approximately 5-10 students per school plus 2 teachers adding up to 60 foreign participants per meeting. All students have to speak English on a communicative level as this language is the main language of our project. In addition, the pupils will be staying with their host families, that is why English will be the main tool of communication between hosts and guests. During the project students will take part in various activities such as: guided visits to the places of historical value, lectures, seminars in places of historical interest, workshops, meetings, city games. Other activities will include sport-oriented tasks (football without frontiers, conquering fears, climbing, basketball etc.) and artistic workshops (drums, drama, drawing, collage, photography, music and dance). Thus the methods used in the project include team work, group work, pair work, presentations, discussions, lessons, artistic events such as drums workshop, painting in the art studio, sport activities, surveys and analyses and are all based on the pricipals of "experiental learning" or - in other words - "learning by doing". The main idea of the project is to combine theoretical and practical parts by learning through reflection on doing. In between the meetings students will work together on various smaller projects, exchanging ideas, learning to communicate, work as a group and reach decisions in a fair and democratic way. Students will learn the value not only of their hometown cultural impact, their traditions but also get the broader scope of a feeling of European unity. By teaching about and working on presenting uniqueness of each participant country we will try to discover the unifying common elements for all the partner nationalities. The main results expected to be achieved through the project can be divided into two groups. The first one being closely connected with all the participants and the other one focusing on more widespread effects. First and foremost we expect the participants to act in a tolerant and open way, think critically and to reflect at the same time. Students from different parts of Europe will get the chance not only to use their language skills but also to exchange their points of view with peers from various backgrounds and of different origins by working on commonly shared values and principles. As to more widespread effects we are sure that the project participants will contribute in a positive way to local communities which will be visited during the exchange meetings, which include a visit to a local hospital, refugee camp or local historical and educational centres. Not only students but also teachers will get the chance to learn about modern educational methods, approaches and systems. Project management skills will be also of great importance as the involvement of various people will be necessary in order to carry out the project. Local authorities and parents will be an important part of the project implementation as their help in organizing the activities will be vital. The beneficent will also be the whole school communities as even the pupils not directly involved in the project will see its positive outcomes. By learning about different cultures, traditions, art, history and geography we will encourage the students to become tolerant, supportive young leaders of the European community.
Our project called YOU ON MY MIND was conducted by six middle schools from the Czech Republic, Poland, Finland, Greece, Croatia and Germany. We established this project group thanks to our contacts from job shadowing, a Centropa project and E-Twinning. The coordinator - the Czech school – was the only school with previous experience from two successful Comenius projects. All partner schools were state schools, apart from the Polish one, which is a private school. All provide their students with general education. Our project aimed at students aged 13-18 and its working language was English. It dealt with two main concepts: tolerance and courage as these issues have become more and more important in modern Europe. The project had a theoretical and practical part. The first one was partially inspired by a multi-national Centropa project (see www.centropa.org) that focused mainly on events connected with the Holocaust and the tragic fate of Jews during WWII. In our project we made the content more general, i.e. we explored both the past and the present to discover “tolerant/courageous persons” or “acts of tolerance/courage” that were inspirational for us (e.g. T.G.Masaryk, Václav Havel, Milada Horáková, The Prize of Michal Velíšek, Marie Kahle, Jan Kirski, Stipe Bozic, Tarja Halonen, Melina Mercouri and many more). In addition to this, we combined the theoretical part with a practical one by using methods of “experimental learning” or “learning by doing” to give the project participants the chance to deal with the concepts of “tolerance” and “courage” also in a creative way. Thus students took part in various activities during the project such as: guided visits to places of historical value (e.g. Jewish synagogue and cemetary in Mikulov, Gestapo headquarters in Cologne, Gross Rosen concentration camp in Poland), lectures (e.g. educational specialist of the EU Bill Martin in Wroclav, Dalton system at the German partner school by the principal Ms Sabine Kreutzer, Finnish school system by Ms Tiina Hervonen in Nurmijarvi), seminars in places of religious, cultural or historical interest (e.g. the reconciliation centre Krzyzowa or the Museum of Solidarnosc in Poland, Croatian Parliament in Zagreb, the House of History in Bonn, the Stavros Niarchos Cultural Foundation or the Inter-Orthodox Center of the Greek Church in Greece), workshops (Jewish dances in Mikulov, work therapy in the psychiatric hospital in Strmac/Croatia), meetings with politicians (e.g. Rafal Dutkiewicz - the mayor of Wroclaw, Pekka Haavisto – Finnish MP and EU negotiator in Syria, Danijel Marusic – deputy mayor of Slavonski Brod) and city games (“ tolerance run” through Hodonin, Helsinki – using the Seppo app when exploring the city) . Other activities included sport-oriented tasks (e.g. outdoor activities at the Saaksi lake in Finland: cross-county skiing, snow-shoeing, curling, ice-fishing, ice-swimming; hiking in the Karkonosze mountains in Poland or at the Pendeli mountain in Greece or conquering fears during outdoor activities with the Croatian Mountain Rescue Service) and artistic workshops (“The Lion Sleeps Tonight” boomwhacker show in Hodonín, “One country, one flag, one T-Shirt” art workshop in Hodonín, drums and graffiti in Croatia, sketches about tolerance vs. intolerance in Finland, photography-painting in Germany and many more). At the very first project meeting we organized a logo competition (the winner was Finland). Each project meeting started with presentations of our countries, hometowns and schools to our partners and ended with an "Erasmus+ Evening" for the public, among others parents, grandparents, teachers, local politicians, local media etc. The main aim that we expected to achieve during the project and on its completion was that the participants would be able to act tolerantly and use the principles of critical thinking at the same time. We also expected that the concepts of “tolerance” and “courage” would not be empty phrases for the project participants after this project. According to the evaluation sheets that each participant filled in at the end of each project meeting, the feedback from host families and parents of our students and also on the basis of our observation during discussions led by Croatian students during the project meeting at their school (topics: “People from war-affected areas should immigrate to other countries” and “Corporal punishments are acceptable when raising children”) our aims were achieved or at least approached. In between and during the project meetings students worked together on various smaller projects, exchanged ideas, learned to communicate, work as a group and reach decisions in a fair and democratic way thus they learned soft skills that will be useful also in their future life. By learning about different cultures, traditions, art, history and geography we encouraged our students to become tolerant, supportive young leaders of the European community.