The European Union has been experiencing an unprecedented refugee crisis. Refugees who have found homes in the member states are now entering the education system. There is an urgent need to ensure that these students find a place in that system both to satisfy their own educational needs but also to help them integrate successfully into their host countries. Only through this integration can we guard against social exclusion, racism and radicalization. At the front of this endeavor are the classroom teachers who work with refugees either in stand alone groups or within multicultural classes. These teachers are rarely trained to work with refugees but must acquire the skills, competences, tools and confidence to work with these new students. Our project is about exploring best practice in this area, exchanging teaching methods and developing techniques and tools to help teachers who face this new challenge. The presence of refugees in the classroom changes the dynamic of the learning environment, issues such as language difficulties, past traumatic experiences, their interaction with other students, the need to respect their cultural values while at the same time helping them to integrate successfully into their new environment presents a learning curve not just for the students but for their teachers as well.Working together, we can find a strong framework to support teachers to become more successful in multicultural classrooms, to provide better support structures in schools to both teachers and students where refugees are present, and to make those involved in educational management at all levels more aware of the needs and challenges associated with the multicultural classroom environment.This project has 5 partner institutes, all with experience of working with minority groups and disadvantaged students. Partners in Turkey, Germany and Italy are very much at the coalface of the migrant crisis, whil partners in Ireland and Romania have significant experience of working with minorities and disadvantaged students.In order to approach this issue in a structured form we intend to: 1) Listen to the needs, concerns, difficulties encountered and general opinions of refugees and asylum seekers currently in our institutes. 2) Examine strategies currently in place in each institute to support Refugees/asylum seekers to integrate successfully into the classroom and progress successfully along the learning pathway. 3) Adopt best practice from each institute and adapt these practices for use in each individual school/college. 4) Create new approaches/strategies to help refugees/asylum seekers to integrate successfully into the European Educational system. 5) Examine progression routes open to refugees. 6) Disseminate the project learning to as wide an educational audience as possible. In doing this we plan to maintain a clear focus on the work of the teacher in the classroom and how the teacher can be empowered to better assist students who are refugees/asylum seekers. Only through the empowerment of teachers in this area can we hope to truly enhance the individual students learning experience. To achieve this we plan to have 4 short term joint staff training events. The first of these will take place at the German institutions working with refugees and migrants. The participants will take part in classes and gain an understanding of the challenges presented by these students and some of the methods being employed to meet these challenges. They will have an opportunity to talk directly to refugees and their parents and will record the challenges refugees face on their educational pathway. The second training event will be in Romania and will include a workshop on inclusive methods used in class. Participants will meet mediators, The Inspector for National Minorities and will be actively involved in classes where children from minority groups are being educated. Teachers will have the opportunity to discuss which methods being employed in the classrooms might also be applied to refugee students. The third training event will include additional workshop and brainstorming sessions on innovative teaching methods for refugees in class. All the participants will visit schools working with refuges and examine the challenges and solutions being employed to help with their educational needs. During the final training event participants will see examples of where best practice from the project is being used in class with refugees and will take classes themselves using methods explored during the project. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss the results of this and refine the teaching methods used.In order to capture the learning from the project and disseminate examples of best practice and innovative teaching methods for working with refugees a website with project documentation, video footage and a book entitled "Educational Integration of Refugees - A Classroom Approach" will be produced.
The European Union has been experiencing an unprecedented refugee crisis. What is clear is that a suitable educational approach must form part of the plan if the refugees are to be integrated as fully functioning members of their host society. This of course will lead to the arrival of refugees into local schools and classrooms. Often teachers receive minimal or no training as to how best to approach the education of these new students. There is sometimes a lack of awareness to the degree of physical and mental trauma these students have suffered, the barriers presented by language and literacy issues, even in cases where the refugee may have had a good level of education from their own country and the fears and misunderstandings the individual refugee may carry to the educational environment. It is from this point that this project begins. Through a series of short term joint training activities we engaged with refugee students, their families, teachers and other stakeholders in order to gain a greater understanding of the educational needs of the refugee students, the potential barriers to meeting these needs and the steps that can be adopted to achieve greater educational integration of the refugees studying in our schools. The first of these short term joint training activities took place in Regen, Germany and the primary focus of this event was to allow teachers to engage directly with refugee students, to listen to their stories, allow them to describe their experiences of the education system and tell us how they felt the system could be improved. This event also allowed participants to meet with teachers working with refugees, volunteers and government and non governmental organisations who work with refugees. The second short term joint training activity took place in Bacau, Romania, during this event the attention of the group shifted to examining how schools work towards the integration of minority groups with the purpose of determining if some of these techniques could also be successfully adapted for use with refugees. In particular the role of mediators working in schools with Roma students was particularly interesting as was the emphasis on music, dance and crafts in schools as tools to assist with integration. The training activities included visits to the Inspectorate for National Minorities in Romania, a wide variety of schools and a number of voluntary organisations. Naples in Italy provided the venue for the third short term joint training activity. The primary purpose of this event was to try out some of the teaching techniques proposed from the previous meetings and to continue our engagement with refugees and the organisations who work with them. To this end each partner country presented one sample class where the use of visual aids or activities supplemented the learning material with a view to moving the classroom emphasis away from just verbal delivery. The final short term joint training activity took place in Istanbul, Turkey. Here participants saw some of the teaching methods proposed for use with refugees being adopted in practice. There was a visit to the Syrian Temporary School (GEM). Here the students are Syrian as are the majority of teachers. The pros and cons of this approach were examined. Again there was significant time allocated to meeting refugee students and some of these discussions helped to focus attention onto the huge trauma that some of the students had experienced prior to their arrival in Turkey. From this the issue of refugee health and in particular the need for support services was highlighted. This training activity also allowed participants to examine the issue of educational progression for refugee students and to identify barriers that may stand in the way of progression. Prior to the first short term joint training activity a questionnaire was devised for both refugee students and their teachers to gather some initial information regarding their educational experiences. This provided a useful starting point and to some degree informed the agenda for the training. Throughout the duration of the project all partners were conscious of the need to disseminate the learning from the training activities to their colleagues and to the wider educational community. A project website was established. Short film clips were posted onto the projects YouTube channel, articles were published in college newsletters and on the websites of each partner institute. A Facebook group was also set up to allow partner