“ON THE MOVE IN EUROPE - TOWARDS A DEMOCRATIC, MULTICULTURAL EUROPE". The present refugees` situation represents a critical challenge for the whole of Europe. Our project aims to lead our students - with or without a migration background, and including present refugees - to a better understanding of the phenomen and show them ways to be confident in their future, which will be rich and fulfilling only if they understand the value of living side-by-side with a diversity of cultures, identities, experiences.Six European partner countries, each with its own viewpoint and specific experience of migration, have come together to share, compare and exchange their ideas, experience and best practices related to multicultural acceptance, participation and integration within their schools, communities and countries. The project consists of four project modules: MIGRATION: A HERITAGE FROM THE PAST TODAY´S REFUGEES-A EUROPEAN CHALLENGE SPOTLIGHT ON DEMOCRACY-WHAT DOES THAT MEAN TO Y O U? OUR RAINBOW SOCIETYAll teaching approaches will be based on innovative methods and summed up in a special teachers' method handbook, a work-in-progress enterprise which will evolve as the project unfolds, guide teachers in all partner schools, and then be made available . All partner teachers taking part in the project will use these methods, be it in curricular lessons, or during project workshops and meetings, or in the teaching of the second (or national) language to newly arrived students from other countries. The handbook will include example teaching modules related to the project based on curricular subjects, encouraging teachers to break down barriers between subjects as they involve their students in discovering and learning with their minds, heart and hands. Innovative methods will include creative, personalized, cooperative, enquiry-based learning and co-teaching approaches. Each international meeting will be preceded in all partner schools by an important phase of preparatory work. Research and production tasks are clearly set out and will involve at least three classes in each school, over 400 students and dozens of teachers. Students will have constant hands-on experience through workshops, roleplay, the creation of artistic works to express their ideas with their minds, hearts and hands. There will be a special focus on ICT work used for intelligent and discerning research, for constant contact with partner students in order to exchange, compare and update discoveries, ideas, proposals and materials, and for the creation of digital 'products'. This phase will prepare students to face the main topics of the following international meeting. We will open our doors to external specialists, politicians, representatives of refugee groups and intercultural experts, to talk and work with students in seminars and workshops. We will visit places of interest and meet and talk to people involved in our topic. Our project involves a cross-subject approach and is extremely product-oriented. It will include ICT, history, politics, social studies, art, music, sports, foreign languages. Students will learn from the past that they have to take responsibility for the present situation of refugees, as they consider and compare similarities and differences in each partner country's situation. This path will inevitably involve a reflection on the reasons why people flee from their homes. Then partner students will share ways of dealing with the challenges of multicultural integration: different national and local policies, welcome cultures, social inclusion strategies, programmes for teaching the national language.Students will realize that their involvement is necessary for the future in the context of participation and integration through dealing with democratic values as an indispensable factor for securing democracy and preventing and combating racism.They will understand the opportunities and challenges of growing cultural and social diversity in our European countries, and learn that democracy is not static, but "on the move"; and that only a real understanding of democratic values will contribute to building a future for our youth in an open, accepting Europe. All results will be presented in the schools, at each meeting, in public spaces and a final show. They will include presentation, the project logo, the schools` concepts of social inclusion and teaching national language, debates, European maps of historical and present migration, films, the project song, soap boxes for democracy, democracy mobiles and kites, reproducable boardgames, the final Table of Brotherhood and a final Musical. Sustainable results will be made available to the schools and the public via e-twinning, school website, media. The longer term benefits will be achieved by the personal impact that our work will leave on all participants, through our reproducable results and by the teachers' method handbook.
Our project „On the Move – Towards a Multicultural Democratic Europe“ deals with the challenges arising from the flow of refugees coming to Europe since 2015 and the changes in the European societies coming with them. In 2015 we expected an undefined number of refugee children coming to our schools to get education. From this situation resulted various problems for which we wanted to find solutions during our project. The teachers wanted to compare and compile teaching methods and units to teach children from different countries with very heterogenous educational backgrounds. Besides that we wanted to exchange best practise experiences in personalized and autonomous learning which we collected in a teachers‘ handbook. With our students we wanted to explore the migration movements to and from our countries throughout history up to date as a normal part of human life and to explore the causes and effects on societies. Furthermore we wanted to sensitize our students and school communities for the importance of democracy and its values and to strengthen them against rightist thinking. The conception of the project began with the combination of schools involved: Italy and Spain as countries with European external borders are especially burdened by the flight routes of the refugees. Our Italian partners agitate against xenophobic tendencies in their region, the Spanish school together with the community of Igualada support the Sahrawi in the Western Sahara for years. Hungary and Romania have different approaches on how to handle the refugee issue. But if we Europeans want to find a solution to the refugee challenge we have to talk about our different points of view. Our partner school in Hungary has students with migration background, our Ro-manian partners are already experienced in teaching the national language as a second language, e.g. to Sinti and Roma children. The Netherlands and Germany are both countries experienced in the integration of people from other countries/cultures. The Dutch partners have „world classes“ and an excellent computer equipment at their school. They try out personalized learning with internally differenciating online school books. Furthermore they have close contact to a refugee camp. In our German classes are many students with a migration background, e.g. from Poland, Russia, Turkey etc. Like the Dutch partners we develop structures for personalized autonomous open learning at our school. The European spirit and the fight against intolerance are the fundamental pillars of our school programme At our coordinators‘ meeting in Romania in 2016 we worked out the details of our project plan and agreed on the content and structure of the teachers‘ handbook. Before and during our meeting in Spain in 2017 our students designed project logos, a project hymn, created presentations of their schools/home towns and did research on migration in the past. They created powerpoint presentations or a posterbook about migration to and from their countries, presented them to each other and collected them on a big timeline in a corridor of the school to show their results to the public. In the Netherlands in November 2017 the students explored the migration background of their families and of their schoolmates, created family trees, compiled their research material in international workshops and created maps to this. Teachers and students visited a refugee camp where they met refugees living there and did some activities together with them. In Germany in 2018 the students worked on cause studies on flight reasons today and on the reasons for discrimination and their influence on the understanding of democracy in their countries. They focused on the discussions about the current rightist movements and on democratic values. In international creative teams they worked on the European Charta of Human Rights and the defense of democracy and its values. The last meeting in Italy in 2018 brought together the results of our work during the project. The students put a musical about the fate of refugees on stage and in an exhibition presented their results and insights of the project and a film about their work to their parents and to the public. All results are published on eTwinning, on our school websites, in the media, on conferences, days of open door, on training events (11.10.2017 in Düsseldorf/13. – 15.05.2018 in Weimar). Our handbook is published on eTwinning and is at disposal for all schools taking part in eTwinning. The lesson plans will be used at our schools in the future. Teachers and students stay in contact. A follow-up project about our cultural heritages and the influence of the cultural heritage of our migrant is discussed. We have developed lasting exchange projects with our partner schools in Italy and the Netherlands, a project with Spain is planned. The cooperation with local refugee assistance organisations has significally deepened.