Diversity and Integration We find ourselves at a time when refugees are fleeing to Europe in order to escape war and oppression. The students should be made to realize that the integration of refugees and migrants is essential for a peaceful coexistence. It is necessary for them to be aware of their global responsibility and to understand that nationalistic politics cannot offer any solution. Our students should demonstrate how they help fellow students with migrant backgrounds, e.g. helping with learning the German language. At the same time they also learn from their new fellow pupils with migrant backgrounds. The students should understand that in the professional world international dependency exists and that people from different cultural backgrounds must work together. With this project we want to breakdown prejudice towards foreigners. Particularly following terror attacks, prejudices are reinforced, breaking these down is an important aim of this project. Students must realize that generalization is never good or correct. Six European schools from Austria, Croatia, Germany, Poland, Portugal and Turkey, together with 300 students wish to carry out this project. All teachers have experience with educating pupils with migration background. Just as with our German pupils, we want to support students with migrant backgrounds entirely according to their abilities and competences, so that when their schooling is completed, they are prepared for the working environment. We want to avoid premature school leaving by helping students to realize their talents and competences and by supporting these. We want to compare the work of the different schools to establish how the best possible integration of refugees and migrants can be achieved in our schools. The Europa School in Gladenbach would like to present the work in their intensive classes to the partner schools, demonstrating how we work with migrants and also learning about the work of our partner schools. Activities are: Creating a project homepage, immigration and emigration in our countries. Preparing a presentation of the work with migrants within schools and society, preparing presentations on culture in the partner countries, compiling curriculum vitae for migrants, visiting companies, handicrafts and cooking. Our students should be motivated to integrate with pupils of migrant backgrounds and to help one another. When all our students realize their competences this will bolster their self-confidence and self-esteem. If we can achieve this, then lower secondary school pupils, refugee and migrant children can work together on projects with grammar school pupils without the fear of being inferior. With this project we want to educate students to be open-minded human beings and to give them the opportunity of visiting our partner schools. We want to prepare our students for living and working in a Europe that is well aware of its global responsibility. This European dimension characterizes our project and our schools.
Diversity and Integration We find ourselves at a time when refugees are fleeing to Europe in order to escape war and oppression. Most of the students involved in the project realized that the integration of refugees and migrants is essential for a peaceful coexistence. Our students became aware of their global responsibility and understand that nationalistic politics can provide no solution in a globalized world. Our students celebrated with the refugee children in integration classes and assisted them with learning the German language. Reciprocally they learnt about the culture of the new children. The students should understand that in the professional world international dependency exists and that people from different cultural backgrounds must work together. During our project meetings we visited very different firms. There the pupils learned about the international dependency of the firms and several pupils could envisage working in another country. In this project we wanted to eliminate prejudice against foreigners. Our short term training class and working activities certainly assisted in this. Working together in international groups provided the children with lots of fun and prejudices and generalization were forgotten. This project was conducted by six schools from Austria, Croatia, Germany, Poland, Portugal and Turkey, together with 300 students. The cooperation was excellent, all pupils worked on presentations, plays and texts. We wanted to compare the work of the different schools to discover how the best possible integration of refugees and migrants can be achieved in our schools. In the Integration Classes the Europaschule Gladenbach presented the work to the partner schools, we demonstrated how we worked with migrants and of course learned about the work of our partner schools. Activities were: Creating a project homepage, immigration and emigration in our countries. Preparing a presentation of the work with migrants within schools and society, preparing presentations on culture in the partner countries, compiling curriculum vitae for migrants, visiting companies, handicrafts and cooking. Our students were encouraged to integrate with pupils of migrant backgrounds and to help one another. Our secondary school pupils from Realschule (not so much Hauptschule) even with migrant background, were able to work with grammar school pupils from partner schools. This project enabled us to educate most pupils to become cosmopolitan people and many students had the opportunity of visiting our partner schools. Our aim was to prepare our students for living and working in a Europe that is well aware of its global responsibility. This European dimension characterized our project and our schools.