As teachers, we wish to prepare our students to handle future challenges, both in their studies and later in life. We want our students to be motivated and interested in the topics we teach. In spite of these goals, we often meet students who say that they find that many of the topics taught at school have little relevance for them. Many educators now focus on in-depth learning. We will need to change the traditional approach we have used if we are to meet this new focus. This project allows us to not only delve into the selected subject areas and share our discoveries; it allows us, at teachers, to find methodologies that will help in that transition. The goal for this project is to both find topics and tasks that we think will engage our students, and to develop our teaching methods to help students play a more active part in their own learning process. We think that working with European colleagues will give us new ideas and help us develop a more enquiry based learning process that will hopefully make our students feel that their schoolwork is relevant for them. Europe faces many challenges today, but one, which is obvious and easy to relate to for students, is the issue migration and integration. The four partner countries all face the challenge of great numbers of migrants arriving these days, but might address this challenge in different ways. This is something that we think students will find interesting and meaningful. Immigrants are a part of their daily life. We face a Europe - and a world - where attitudes to people from other cultures than your own seem to develop in a more negative direction. An important aim for us is to help change these attitudes through increased knowledge and personal contact across cultural boundaries. The partner school will work with this topic in many subjects such as English, social studies, geography, history etc. We will also engage students on different levels, the total number of students taking directly part in the project will be about 100 each year for each partner school + the teachers teaching these subjects. A major goal is student activity, engagement and motivation: Learning by doing. To reach this goal we will use a variety of activities such as excursions, interviews with fellow students from other countries, interviews with people who work with newly arrived immigrants etc. Students will be encouraged to try to find their own answers to their own questions. In this process, contact with European students will make them more open to different solutions and views and it will also give them a motivating possibility to practice the foreign languages they learn at school in realistic settings. We will share our work and results both on a project facebook page and on Etwinning and by keeping our colleagues informed about our experiences. In the short run we hope to increase the students learning outcome and understanding, in the long run it will hopefully help us as teachers build bridges between students, facilitate integration and prevent exclusion by methodologically working with this topic in many subjects. In addition, we think that the students taking part in the project will obtain a wider perspective on and a better understanding of a major challenge that our societies face today and will certainly have to address in the future, but more importantly understand how migration has enriched and still enriches our societies. The outcome of this work will hopefully result in teaching that will focus more on student activity, and the methods and tasks we use can certainly be used in other topics as well.
As teachers, engaged in this project, our goal was to prepare our students to face the challenges both in their studies and later in life. We have made efforts to make our students more motivated and interested in the topics we teach. After two years of work, we found that most of the students, involved in the activities and their friends, say that many of the subjects taught at school are already more relevant to them. Of course, there are still others with whom we will continue to work. Following the exchanges made between the school teams, many colleagues focused on up to day teaching. We changed the traditional approach and as a result we managed to achieve this new goals proposed in our application. This project allowed us not only to go into the chosen areas and share our experience; for teachers it was an opportunity to find teaching methods that helped this transition. At the same time, the goal of our project was to find topics and tasks that would be of interest to our students and help them play a more active role in their own learning process. We believe that working and being able to interact with European colleagues has given new ideas to everyone and has helped us to develop a learning process based on research and self-study. We hope to safeguard this valuable experience well beyond the active phase of the project and to improve it throughout life. Among the many challenges Europe faces today, migration and the integration of migrants have a special place. Unfortunately, we often face a Europe - and a world - where attitudes towards people from cultures differant from ours seem to be moving in a rather negative direction. As part of our activities, we have offered to help change these attitudes by increasing personal knowledge and contacts across cultural boundaries. Our efforts were rewarded because the issue was relatively easy for students to understand, as immigrant students and their families are part of their daily lives. The four partners all face a large number of migrants currently arriving in our countries. Everyone reacts in more or less different ways. The exchange of practices within the project has been interesting and meaningful for our learners, their families and our colleagues. Teachers from partner schools have worked on this subject in many subjects such as English, Social studies, Geography, History, ICT, etc. We have also engaged students from different levels and consider it a great asset, since a significant number of our students have been directly or indirectly involved in the activities carried out and the obtained results. A significant result, due to the work in the project, deserves attention - we have been able to increase student activity, engagement and motivation by helping them learn by doing. To achieve this goal, we used various activities such as interviews with other students, interviews with people who work with newly arrived immigrants, visits in migrant integration centers, etc. Students were encouraged to find their own answers to their own questions. In this process, contact with students from partner schools opened them up to different solutions and points of view and also offered them a motivating opportunity to practice foreign languages learned in school in a realistic setting. We consider that we have increased the learning outcomes of our students. In addition, they now better understand the challenges migrants face and are ready to help them integrate into a new reality. Thanks to the contacts made, we are all better aware of the enrichment that these "foreigners" bring to our societies. Our project and the innovative work on the subject of migration have helped our educational teams to create rewarding professional contacts and create ties between them. In our opinion, these results will continue to facilitate integration and prevent exclusion and xenophobia from taking over. The results of our work are published both on the project blog, a Facebook page and on Etwinning. We believe that they have resulted in a more active teaching of students. We wanted to keep our colleagues informed of our experience since the methods used can certainly be applied in other areas.