Watch And Learn: Improve Together

We live in difficult times, not only in a region struck by massive unemployment but also recovering from a pandemic and worried about the war in Ukraine. The descendants of the immigrants who once came to Genk to work in the coal mines and once dreamt of returning to their country of origin, are facing different problems than their parents once were. Our school is situated close to the city center of Genk, a village that was once a mining village. Our pupils often live in poverty and mainly have a migration background. They work on the side to support their family. They lack motivation and often drop out of school early without the necessary skills to do well on the job market. The last few years not only migrant children are facing difficulties, also the refugees with often traumatic backgrounds enter our schools and ask for special approaches we sometimes do not feel equipped for. Throughout the project we have been trying to formulate an answer to these changing conditions, by trying to find ways on the one hand to enhance their motivation but at the same time also increase their chances on the job market and in their personal life. Let’s learn from each other, we had so many good things to share and to learn, we tried to create a way to systematically watch and learn. This project aimed on a teacher level at enhancing our knowledge of the mechanisms behind deprivation in different ways and trying to learn from others to improve our own skills and structures to be better equipped to keep combating the lack of opportunities for certain student groups. Teachers were, despite Covid able to collect information about the different school systems and structures by visiting almost all the partner schools and find information and good practices to tackle failure in education with vulnerable groups. At a student level, we wanted to focus on improving their insight in factors that create disadvantage from the very beginning and on finding ways to fight threshholds. Students worked on these issues and collected knowledge during the student meeting in the Genk. The participants did not only act as evaluators of the program/workshop. They also improved their own motivation and self-image, and by traveling and meeting people from other cultures they created their own ‘equal’ opportunities and got a bigger European awareness. Students felt better equipped and teachers have collected strategies which they could try out at home and implement in the future. Per country 2 teachers and 5 students traveled. Students between 14 and 18 years old applied to participate in the project. Students from minority groups or refugees got special attention in this selection process.Of course more teachers and students were involved in our home countries and the subjects were worked on within the normal curriculum of the students to get a bigger impact. Also external partners as representatives of the city hall and members of our board of education were involved. Our German partner brought a lot of experience to this project. Via them we met our Spanish partners whom we connected with immediately because we recognized the same struggles. They were mainly working with Roma minorities as the French school who they advised us to contact. We proved to be a very compatible team: not only in terms of school profiles but also in terms of teacher teams who thought alike:more opportunities for all our students! This project was not only about working together for 2 years, it was about creating a web of connections between several partners, European or not, that not that would last far beyond this project and in itself created other opportunities to offer a chance of success to ALL our kids. The Covid pandemic abruptly ended our student meetings after the first one in Genk in January 2020. After that, partner schools were not allowed to travel with students because of the risks of infection and everything connected to that. Students have been working on the project online but could not be asked to evaluate practices they had not experienced. In the beginning of the pandemic we also chose to focus on the well being of the student. So all the students’ activities have been focused on connection, keeping in touch, sharing Covid experiences and on common subjects. Also our teacher meetings were rescheduled, we showed we were a very flexible team, teachers used their holidays to be able to get to the meetings. In the end all the teacher meetings were organized. We still hope and are convinced that the steps we took, will encourage even more teachers and students in our schools and beyond to take a leap and give it shot! As we planned on the long-term, we have created a bigger web, students and teachers are or will be visiting our partner schools already this school year. 'It scared us but it definitely was a good thing to try!'