The project will be implemented with the cooperation of four countries, Hungary, Spain, Italy and Poland. The participating organizations, as they operate in a village or a small town, are similar in type, size and scope of work. We share common interests in European cultures, and all of us are committed to quality education. The education programs of our schools give high priority to improving our students’ cultural awareness. Our main objectives are the internationalisation of our schools and to develop intercultural competencies through international cooperation. We can identify some common needs on the basis of our context and background.We would like to open a European dimension and create education programmes with executing international projects. We aim to give new perspectives to our students who face economic and social difficulties, and cope with the problems that originate from the cultural differences of the children. We want to improve the students’ language competences and broaden their perspective in life. The title of our project is Be in my shoe- Cooperative Project Work for Developing Cultural Competencies. Our concept is that the European Union is a multicolour community of different nations. The future generations will grow up as European Citizens and they need to learn to accept and understand cultural differences to be successful and confident in this multicultural environment. During the project we are going to perform activities in different fields of culture such as music, folklore, art, cuisine, or history. Dealing with this topic opens the door to raise the participants’ tolerance towards other cultures .They can build networks of international contacts and develop a sense of European citizenship. We are intending to use a wide variety of contemporary pedagogical approaches, such as the Complex Instruction approach of the Stanford University, project based learning, innovative ICT applications and formative assessment. As a result of the project we are planning to integrate new practices and teaching methods into our curriculums to teach heterogeneous classes more effectively. In this process dealing with intercultural differences is a necessary condition for success. Our learning outputs and results will be reflected in our final products. We are going to edit an online magazine with interviews, articles, audio or video records, recipes, and digital cartoons. Besides we will create a project website to publish actual news, photos and the description of project activities. We organize four international learning, teaching and training activities, one in each country. The host country is responsible for the implementation of the activity. Each student meeting is preceded by a preparation phase. The participants do preliminary researches on the cultural characteristics of the host country. The exact activities will be elaborated by the active participation of the host students, and the partners are expected to execute the tasks through virtual cooperation. Teachers support the students and assist them in preparation. Through cooperative project work on the spot students gain hands on experience on the culture of the host country. During this phase the students are expected to present the results of their previous research and they can extend their knowledge taking part in further activities such as making crafts, learning a piece of music or folk dance, visiting attractions, cooking local food. The students work in mixed groups, so they have to cooperate and deal with difficulties originated from their cultural differences. On each occasion, we will organize public farewell parties when each nation is represented and anyone interested can join, such as other students, parents, local representatives. On these occasions the students perform a piece of music or dance that they have learnt. Crafts and art works made during the mobilities will be also displayed. As a significant result of our project the participants’ intercultural competences will develop and their language and communicative competence will improve. The students and teachers learn tolerance towards foreign cultures. In the long term the schools become able to offer higher quality education to the students who achieve more success in further education, and on the increasingly competitive labour market. In this way the schools will meet the parents’ requirements, and build a higher reputation in their region. The school management establishes new contacts and opens the possibility of further cooperation. Our results will be widely disseminated in the media and professional forums so hopefully, we will inspire other schools to start a European Union granted project
The project was implemented with the cooperation of four countries, Hungary, Spain, Italy and Poland. Our main objectives were the internationalisation of our schools and to develop intercultural competencies. The expression ‘Be in my Shoe’ in the title of the project refers to our concept that the European Union is a multicolour community of different nations and the future generations need to accept cultural differences to be successful in this multicultural environment. We involved 10-15-year-old students. We focused on culture and it gave us the possibility to involve numerous teachers who are not language educators. Beside English teachers, music, art, ICT, PE, and history teachers supported the children. During the project we performed activities in several fields of culture including music, folklore, art, cuisine, sport and games and history. We organized four mobilities, one in each country. Each student meeting was preceded by a preparation phase. The participants did research on the culture of the host country and edited a Google Slide presentation cooperatively. We made four presentations titled ’Discover Hungary’, ’Welcome to Spain’ ’Souvenirs from Italy’ and ’Immerse in Poland’. The students also made a show that characterised their country or school. During the meetings, the students took part in various activities in order to learn about the culture of the host country, such as making crafts, learning a piece of music or folk dance, visiting attractions and cooking. They also joined the local school life and participated in lessons. The students worked in mixed groups, therefore they had to cooperate and deal with difficulties originated from their cultural differences. On each occasion, we organized a public farewell party where anyone interested could join, such as other students, parents, local representatives. On these occasions the students performed a Cultural Talent Show. Craft and art works made during the mobility were also displayed. We used contemporary pedagogical approaches. In Hungary, we introduced the Hungarian adaptation of Complex Instruction approach of the Stanford University. It provided a useful model to work with culturally heterogeneous groups and doing cooperative teamwork. In Spain we focused on gaining real life experiences through Project Based Learning. Innovative ICT tools enriched our project in Italy, such as Coding, Lego Robots, Scratch. Finally, Poland completed our toolbar with practical examples of Formative Assessment. The workshops included presentations to explain the theoretical background, interactive activities and model lessons to study the practical implementation. As a result, we built a complex methodology using the elements of all approaches. The participating teachers are enthusiastic to integrate these new elements into their lessons. The crisis caused by the SARS-CoV issued a challenge to us. During the quarantine period we extended our project with online cooperative activities. The last mobility hosted by Poland was a virtual meeting because we couldn’t realize it personally. We managed to execute a 5 days’ programme including all essential elements like presentations, craft, dance and cooking workshops, a teachers’ workshop and a Talent Show. Our learning outputs and results are reflected in our final products. We edited four volumes of an online magazine titled: Discover Hungary, Enjoy Spain, Souvenirs from Italy and Immerse in Poland. They contain interviews, articles, videos and recipes written by the students and the teachers. Besides we made a Teacher’s Guide with practical teaching ideas. Our project website was created to publish information about the project. We got feedback from the participants regularly. Our scheduled evaluation made it possible to prove the significant development of the participants’ intercultural, language and communicative competences. The detailed analysis can be found in the Final Evaluation Report. You can find the participants’ opinion in the online magazines as well. When we read their writings we can see that they learnt to tolerate and appreciate the different cultures. In the long term the schools intend to integrate the new pedagogical tools into their curriculums, therefore they can offer higher quality education to the students. The students became more interested and motivated in language learning and international cooperation and it promotes their further possibilities in the higher education. According to the parents’ opinion the international projects represent an added value for the school. We expect that it will influence our future reputation, and the number of students will increase. The school management established new contacts, Felsőtárkány Primary School and Zawoja agreed on a Twin School Partnership. We will look for the possibilities of the future cooperation with the other partners as well because our partnership was fruitful.