We all witnessed masses of people from the Middle East crossing the Mediterranean Sea at the end of the summer 2015. As a consequence, six secondary schools (Poland, Turkey, Italy, Greece, Norway and France) decided to work on a common two-year project that would give rise to collective consciousness about the phenomenon through a project we have decide to call MIGRANT (acronym for Many Immigrants Go and/or Return to/from Another National Territory) aiming at understanding the push factors of immigrants through time, then moving on to study the situation of the refugees as well as the pull factors of the EU countries. This project will be innovative in the sense that it will allow the students to know directly this "issue", like witnesses of the situation in situ carrying out voluntary work, standing back from the omnipresent media prism. Besides, it will give us a chance to see the best practices in different countries during mobilities (Italy April,2017; Greece Nov,2017; France March,2018) such as innovative methods of teaching like peer-to-peer education and/or PBL (Problem Based Learning), and/or CLIL approach; advocating European values and citizenship through international and humane cooperation; comparing the ways each of our partner countries are facing the situation; or what makes some countries attractive to migrants. Effective communication will be ensured by many ways of doing so. All partners are already cooperating and communicating through the social media, via emails, a whatsup group, a messenger group, and through a googlesite expressly created for the project, and this will be pursued. And once agreement is given, students’ communication will be carried out on a Facebook group of the project, transnational meetings will take place three times (Poland Nov,2016; Turkey Oct,2017; Norway May 2018). Since evaluation is a crucial stage to see if our action is unfolding as planned, the major actions will be assessed using the SMARTER objectives and indicators (Specific, Measurable, Accepted, Realistic, Time-defined; Evaluable; Resettable). Dissemination will be assured by a blog, an online newspaper uploaded on the website of each partner school. To avoid any risk of misunderstanding, the project has been organized in a realistic and pragmatic way: the division of tasks between the partners is detailed and each school involved in the project knows clearly its role.The activities will be varied, and amongst the common ones will be organizing a logo competition to symbolize the project, workshops at school firstly about each partner's rules and the positions of national political parties on migrants, then about some significant stories of migrants, and finally about the history of immigration in each partner country; each host partner will organize some lessons about his own country language about the "migration terms". Other activities are planned such as: writing and composing (poems; a play that will be performed by the students; a song... about migration); creating online illustrated documents: weekly/monthly news review on migrations, collecting articles related to the issue - thus, the pupils will get to know the editorial line of their national newspapers); publishing the book with real life-stories of immigrants in the form of "national chapters" (Turkish Chapter, Polish Chapter, etc); a common guide on how to deal with racism and xenophobia. Specific activities will also take place in the partner countries: e.g visit to museums of immigration, voluntary service, Oxford debates, hot spots visits.We expect this partnership to have an impact on students (adding respect, tolerance and understanding towards students from different backgrounds to diminish or even eliminate injustice and violence, discrimination and marginalization; developing capacities for independent judgement, critical thinking and ethical reasoning; broadening their knowledge and understanding of the way national and European institutions work; improving communication skills; enhancing motivation to learn foreign languages – and more particularly English by learning subjects in the framework of CLIL approach; increasing social skills within the prospect of a better knowledge of the migrations phenomenon in Europe; getting interested in exchanging with others to be able to compare different points of views and finally adopt the one that suits them best; strengthening the role of the peer-to-peer education; improving ICT-skills. But staff, parents, the schools and the migrants themselves will be impacted by the project as they will be part of it. As it is school's duty to encourage students to adopt a responsible attitude and to get to know what solidarity and social cohesion mean in action, we expect them to keep in touch with active citizenship.
It is in a context of massive migration of people coming especially from the Middle-East and crossing the Mediterrenean Sea that the project MIGRANT (acronym of “Many Immigrants Go and/or Return to/from Another National Territory”) was born. The targeted objectives enabled to raise awareness of this phenomenon, to understand the push factors through time, then tu study more precisely the situation of refugees who left countries affected by wars and military conflicts and the pull factors of European countries. The participants have been able to compare the way the partner countris face this situation. This project was the occasion to exchange the innovative methods of teaching and learning of the partner countries. 6 schools were involved in the project: in Turkey in Nazilli, in Italy in Formia, in Norway in Tertnes, in Greece in Platykampos (Larissa), in Poland in Katowice and in France in Lys-Lez-Lannoy. The web sites of these schools are visible on the website of the project that was created by the Norwegian partners: http://my-migrant.org A Google site https://sites.google.com/site/migrantemergency/ was created and so was a Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/migrantemergency/?eid=ARBAgdldggF0-GOggTGCg03omS2ggBqdmJ7duV-wpS_dl3eS2ocq2oqHm3NuY5nqagfIDIT71C3RIV-x During the transnational meetings, each school was represented by 2 teachers. A first meeting took place in Poland in November 2016. Didactic workshops took place, about refugees (particularly a conference by Professor Halina Grzymała-Moszczyńska, from the Jagiellonian University, in Cracow) and about innovative methods of teaching and learning (The Oxford-Style Debate, CLIL (Content and Language integrated Learning), peer-to-peer education, formal and non formal education) 4 project meetings allowed us to precisely plan the project. The second meeting took place in Turkey in September 2017. The project meetingsespecially allowed us to evaluate the first year of the project according to the SWOT analysis method. The third and last meeting took place in Norway in May 2018 and allowed us to finalize and evaluate the project. 3 Learning/Teaching/Training activities (to which 4 to 6 students and 2 or 3 teachers participated each time) took place in Italy in May 2017, in Greece in November 2017 and in France in March 2018. Each of these mobilities was the occasion of visits of associations working for migrants, meetings with the migrants themselves and volunteer work of the participants with them. The students of each partner schools presented workshops on three themes: The rules of their countries and the positions of their political parties regarding immigration. The history of immigration in their countries. How to deal with racism and xenophobia in their countries. Meetings with local authorities were carried out, occasions of rich exchanges. Furthermore, creative activities took place during each mobility. The results of the mobilities were first shown at the end of each of them during a final ceremony to which the students and their families were invited. Articles were written in the local press. These results are visible on the website of the project. All the participants their CV and language passports thanks to the Europass platform. The Turkish partners created and published a newspaper about the project. This newspaper was massively distributed in the Turkish school and copies were distributed to the partner schools. The Polish partners created ans published a comic strip, 100 copies were printed and shared in the partner schools, copies that are now enriching the partner schools libraries. A game named “Immigranopolis” was elaborated by the Greek partners, one copy was offered to each partner school during the mobility in France. This game is now also available in the partner schools libraries. The most important action was the collaboration of all the participants in the shooting of a film with interviews of migrants carried out in each country, film that the Polish partners have produced. Finally, a list of volunteer associations working with migrants in the partner countries was elaborated by the Italian partners to allow the sensibilized people to know where they can get involved if they wish to. All the activities and results of the project have been assessed. The participants answered a questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of the project, so as to make the results visible.