In our project, the European School of Karlsruhe, Germany, will work together with secondary schools in Sweden (Malgomaj Skolan , Vilhelmina), Bulgaria (SOU Sveti Kliment Ohridski, Dalopol), France (Collège Vauban, Strasbourg ) and England (Notting Hill and Ealing High School, London). We all aim at creating and promoting a school with a sense of togetherness and a positive learning atmosphere. Why do we want that? In our different schools there are different problems connected with gender issues that hamper the learning atmosphere and success and a feeling of belonging together. We intend to make gender roles visible, we want to start investigating and drawing attention to this problem and tackle the problems we have discovered. Each school will have a different focus addressing specific problems connected with gender issues we have discovered by already having conducted a survey among students. We all will try to find solutions and will present and share our experiences: The school in Karlsruhe will tackle the problem that many boys have problems in studying, do less homework and tend to have worse results in tests than girls and will also try to make teachers aware of a sometimes sexist behaviour. Sweden will focus on equal rights (each school in Sweden is obliged to have an equal rights plan) and work against racism, which has increased due to the high percentage of refugees. The Bulgarian school will aim to build a bridge between Roma students and their parents in order to "emancipate" these girls and women and make both generations realize the importance of having education and career in order to gain equality in society. The French school will focus on the issues of social inequalities and their different repercussions on the schooling and in the education of boys and girls. The gender roles and inequalities will be framed through the questions of homework, housework, sports practised during free time, chosen orientations after school etc. . They will also set up a study hall once a week: voluntary students or parents will participate. The English school will focus on improving the independent learning and risk-taking with girls and explore to what extent their learning is different from that of boys. It will aim for the project to be led by the girls themselves in their own exploration of gender issues both at home and abroad. After the first project year, the findings from each school will be presented at the project meeting with students and teachers at the International Forum Burg Liebenzell, Germany. The findings will be shared in the group, so that the other schools can profit from them, thus learning cooperatively. In the second year, each school presents the ideas and the materials from the first project meeting to the rest of their respective schools to implement the ideas they found most useful, with a view to creating a school with optimal learning possibilities for gender. Moreover, we will all work together on one common topic each year. In the 1st year, we want to reflect on our own gender -investigate important role-models for our students in European history and in the present. In the 2nd year the schools will examine together gender roles and issues in society and in the media. All results will be presented at the second project meeting in Strasbourg. We will have two teacher meetings. The 1st will take place in Sweden in November 2017, the 2nd in November 2018 in Bulgaria. We will get to know each other, the schools, the exchange including what each school has done and explain what we are going to do by the project meetings. We will ensure that we can evidence the impact of our interventions. During our project we aim at finding methods (teaching, learning etc.) to tackle the gender-related issues in our schools and change gender-related attitudes and behaviour. Our school policies will be adapted and improved. We will create and use the eTwinning space and exchange our results and products via eTwinning. Furthermore, we will create a project website. A blog will be developed and a newspaper published with a collection of all our findings after the 1st year. During and at the end of the 2nd year our results and findings will be presented in various creative ways: by short films, presentations (prezi, power point), a piece of music or a poem in response to the findings, all presented at our last meeting. The results will be collected on a DVD and published on eTwinning and our websites. We will evaluate the students’ and teachers' opinions from all partner schools on the process of the project using questionnaires, interviews, creative forms of evaluation like collages, feedback, flashlight, world café as well survey - monkey. The results of our project will be published and shared with local and European schools and educational organisations. In-school teacher training will be offered to pass on the project's findings in our respective schools.
In our project "Gender ISsues - Tackle the problem (GIST)" the European School of Karlsruhe, Germany, worked together with secondary schools in Sweden (Malgomaj Skolan , Vilhelmina), Bulgaria (SOU Sveti Kliment Ohridski, Dalopol), France (Collège Vauban, Strasbourg) and England (Notting Hill and Ealing High School, London). In the 1st year, we reflected on our own gender and investigated important role-models for our students in European history and in the present and followed each our own focus regarding the topic. We had one transnational teacher meeting in Vilhelmina and two short-term exchanges of groups of pupils in England anf Germany to produce our project newspaper, have workshops together, exchange and present our results and products. In the 2nd year of our project we continued our work together. We now wanted to examine together gender roles and issues in society and, especially, in the media. In our respective schools a lot of activities took place on ErasmusDay, 12th October 2018, which also served as a kind of opening of our year two. France produced posters with statistics and provocative questions, presented them in the Collège and discussed them with the students of the school. Students of the Erasmus club went into the classes and informed about the project. Sweden created an Erasmus wall. England had the first meeting of the Erasmus club. In a club fair at the beginning of the school year, they presented the project to the students of the school. Bulgaria created an Erasmus Gist – frame. They had a meeting in the cultural centre in Asparuhovo with the mayor of Varna and took photos with him and the Erasmus group in the Erasmus frame. Germany produced an Erasmus Rap and presented it to the school community. They also showed a film, in which, amongst other things, the students tear two banners saying ”Boys can do anythings better than girls” and ”Girls can do anything better than boys” trying to make a statement” while roping down a climbing wall. In our second project meeting in Bulgaria, we discussed the topics and organisation of our 2nd project year. At the same time, we learnt from results or methods tried out in the first year. We agreed to further present our project via our blog (https://genderissuesinschools.blogspot.se/), on eTwinnning, Instagram (gistproject) and Twitter (@nhehs) and staged an Erasmus Gender in the Media Competition on Instagram: The students of all schools should be encouraged to post photos on a different topic each month on Instagram (# gist). We also started a discussion on eTwinning among our Erasmus students, presenting to them the genderbread person, among others. On Wednesday, 30th November 2018, the Erasmus group of the European School of Karlsruhe visited the partner school in Strasbourg, the Collège Vauban. Mme Françoise Bey, Vice-president and assistant to the mayor of Strasbourg spoke about actions taken by the town in order to support the equality of women and men and Mme Virginie Jeltsch, responsible for equality at the „Academie“, presented her field of work and discussed the topic “Gender Issues” with the French and German students. In the afternoon, the whole group went into the yard of the school, where the inauguration of the schools’ “Erasmus Street” took place. All partner schools and different results are being presented at the Collège at different posts, lined up as a “street”. During the whole school year the schools worked in different classes and with their Erasmus groups on our topic, also preparing for our big Erasmus meeting in Straßburg in May 2019. In our final student visit to Strasbourg, Students and teachers from all partner schools met in the European Youth Centre outside the centre of the city of Strasbourg. We enjoyed a visit to the European Parliament where the group learnt about the important work conducted in the building as well as the structure of European politics. The 5 partner schools were divided into 4 groups. 2 groups set about creating Graphic Design displays on the topic of Gender Equality, whereas 2 other groups took part in Film workshops on the same topic. The groups all contained students from the 5 schools from both genders. Once the films and graphic designs were created, they were presented in the French school. The students themselves presented their work to their peers, the Headmasters of 2 of the schools and the Deputy Head of the French school. The Head of the German school closed the presentation discussing how powerful the work had been. Finally, we visited the town hall in Strasbourg to present the work to the Deputy Mayor. One additional interesting activity which took place during the visit to France was a series of presentations by each school on the Thursday evening about what each school had been doing in their own country to raise the profile of gender equality. Our final year ended with the evaluation of year 1 and the dissimination of our work.