The motivation for our project is to increase awareness among teachers and students that we together are creating the future with stories and perspectives of today and about our past. Often dimensions of diversity are forgotten and many stories untold. For example, in history books few women and few migrants are presented even if they played a major role in development and change. We would also like to make discrimination of groups and individuals visible by different learning methods including both creative and digital methods. Our plan is to look at different perspectives throughout the project time, thus involving different teacher groups, and then investigate and conclude how different perspectives and subject are linked to each other. We would like to empower students and teachers to find and address stories that motivates students with diverse backgrounds. We will also include different perspectives and different stories based upon the different involved countries. Our objectives are to promote inclusive learning. We plan to develop a Virtual Book where the involved countries contribute with both material (stories) and methods. We would with that like to increase awareness of the existence of role models for women, migrants and minority groups. The Virtual Book should be made public to inspire and to have new stories added. Another objective is to develop critical thinking when co-operating both when using digital platforms eTwinning/Office365/xxx and at our training events and exchanges. The project involves five schools from different regions in Europe. From the North: Sweden, South: Portugal and Italy, East: Czech Republic and West: France. All schools are Upper Secondary School, the Portuguese school is a Music school that offers education from the age of 7. Students involved in the project are between 15-18 years old. All schools have experience of international cooperation. The involved teachers teach different subjects. From for example Art, History, English to Science. The first activity, C1, in France is dedicated to planning setting up the Virtual Book. (The Virtual Book will be constantly updated throughout the project time. All schools will work with chosen themes in between meetings to prepare and conclude.) The next will be a meeting with students and teachers in Sweden, C2, working on the theme of untold stories of politicians and activists. The working method role-play. After that a student activity, C3, in Czech Republic with scientists and inventors in focus. Working method Exhibition. Next C4, a meeting in Italy to plan and adjust what we have done and will do. Also look at evaluations and test lesson material and working methods. C5 will be a student meeting in Portugal focused on musicians and artists. With artistic exhibition as method. C 6 France Entrepreneurs and Philanthropists as the topic. Filmmaking as method. C 7 in Italy focuses on Narrators and Poets. Performance as method. Finally, we plan a meeting in Sweden C 8 where we work with finalizing the Virtual Book. To make sure it will work out like intended we will try everything out in other departments or schools. We want the Virtual Book as an inspiration where you can work with some of the presented stories and/or use among methods presented, and even add new stories. In cooperation with students and teachers from other countries we aim at making school and education more interesting. It is vital for all to have a broader perspective and to learn more about each other in Europe. For young people to meet and see other cultures, living with families is a great experience. New contacts and Europe as a common project is in focus. When working with the different topics we will have examples from different countries but we are sure to find common stories to feel that unity. Our aim is to use inclusive methods and stories/topics to make our students feel more motivated and engaged in a long-term perspective. Making them the new role models.
The motivation for our project was to increase awareness among teachers and students that we together create the future with stories and perspectives of today and about our past. Often dimensions of diversity are forgotten and many stories untold. For example, in history books few women and few migrants are presented even if they played a major role in development and change. We also wanted to make discrimination of groups and individuals visible by different learning methods including both creative and digital methods. Our plan was to look at different perspectives throughout the project time, thus involving different teacher groups like science teachers, civic and history teachers, art and music teachers and also language teachers. With the students finding, working with and presenting the success and role-model stories of migrants, minorities and women pupils could see what is possible to achieve even if you have a diverse background. In the project participating countries also were diverse with different history, heritage, geography and present situation. This diversity was reflected in the stories told. One of our objectives was to promote inclusive learning. We developed a Virtual Book where the involved countries contributed with the content, the untold stories. The different teaching and presentation methods were presented in our homepage of the project (untoldeuropeanstories.eu) with that we like to increase awareness of the existence of role models for women, migrants and minority groups. The Virtual Book was made public to be read, and work as inspiration and for readers to have increased knowledge. The Virtual Book will be open for additional stories from our pupils. Another objective was to develop critical thinking when co-operating both when we used the digital platforms Teams, zoom and initially eTwinning, and at our training events and pupil exchanges. We included discussions between the pupils from different countries. The project involved five schools from different regions in Europe. From the North: Sweden, South: Portugal and Italy, East: Czech Republic and West: France. All schools are Upper Secondary Schools, the Portuguese school is a Music school that offers education from the age of 7. Students involved in the project were between 14-18 years old. All schools had experience of international cooperation previous to the start of the project. The teachers that have been involved teach different subjects. The first activity, C1, in France was supposed to be dedicated to planning setting up the Virtual Book. That activity was not accepted and we held a meeting for planning the project instead. The next was a meeting with students and teachers in Sweden, C2, we worked on the theme of untold in our planned stories of politicians and activists. The working method during that meeting was role-play. Next came a student activity, C3, in Czech Republic with scientists and inventors in focus. Working method during that meeting was interactive and informative exhibition. Next, C4, was a meeting in Italy with teachers only. In that meeting we tested the two working methods tried out in the two previous meetings. We did that involving several classes in two Italian schools. The methods were discussed and evaluated by teachers and pupils. C5 was a student meeting in Portugal focused on musicians and artists. We worked with an artistic methods and pupils could by that make illustrations for our Virtual Book. C 6 should have been in France but because of Covid it was impossible to travel to France and to work with film as was intended in our plan. A digital three-day meeting was instead dedicated to Entrepreneurs. C 7 In Italy focused on Narrators and Poets and we worked with and translated poems. Performances reading poems by Italian pupils and visiting students in different outdoor environments. Finally, we had a meeting in Sweden C 8 where we worked with finalizing the Virtual Book and also tested the role-play material but this time with younger students at another school. We wanted the Virtual Book as an inspiration where you can work with some of the presented stories and even add new stories. In cooperation with students and teachers from other countries we aimed at making school and education more interesting. We learned more about each other from different corners of Europe and for young people it was of great value to meet and see other cultures, to have lived with families. New contacts were made and Europe as a common project was in focus in our project. When working with the different topics we had examples from different countries but we also collected common stories to feel that unity. Our aim was to use inclusive methods and stories/topics to make our students feel more motivated and engaged in studies and in a long-term perspective. Making them the new role models.