Language families are related

The project title picked up on a truism and often needed explanation: factually, it was about the linguistic roots of Europe and the teaching of basic linguistic skills, but psychologically, it was about a sense of belonging across nationalities. Five partner schools from Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain wanted to trace the development of the European language families and the common European vocabulary in relevant word fields at five international meetings. The main objective, apart from the general promotion of empathy for Europe, was for the participating pupils to expand their intercultural competences through travel and joint activities and to communicate with each other in foreign languages. Following the "best-practice experiences" of previous projects, the project was divided into five sub-projects with the same structure and procedure. In Spain and Italy, the focus was on the Romance language family and terms in religious, technical or political texts that are derived from Latin and are used in (phonetically or orthographically) modified form in all European languages. Each host school set the focus in such a way that regional conditions were optimally utilised for their project programme. In Bracciano (C5), they went to nearby Rome and collected Latin inscriptions in the cityscape, from which language tasks could be developed. The Catholic partner school in Fraga (C1) integrated sacred art and various churches in Barcelona as well as the old city Christmas market into their research tasks on religious terms. Due to a good network with the local university, the manipulative aspect in (political) language was to be analysed in Gorizia (C4), as well as the linguistically challenging situation of the city, where three different language families coexist. Unfortunately, this part of the project (C4) had to be cancelled precisely because the Covid pandemic could not be dealt with in Gorizia due to the border situation so that a multinational school project meeting did not seem responsible. After careful consideration, the project coordinators decided against the alternative of turning the meeting into a 3-day "virtual meeting" according to the guidelines of the national agencies, because it was disproportionately costly and not feasible in the 5 schools. The meeting in Bialystok (C3), Poland, was not only to be about the Slavic language family, but - again using the regional specificity of the partner - the European artificial language Esperanto. Since Bialystock is the birthplace of the inventor of this language, a visit and work phases in the local Esperanto museum were organised, among other things. However, shortly before the scheduled date of the project meeting in Poland, the Corona pandemic broke out outside Italy as well and all partner schools issued travel bans for student trips abroad. Since the Esperanto theme and the aspect of the Slavic language family had a key position in our project, we tried intensively to make it happen by postponing the date four times (!). The last possible date of March 2022 was cancelled, to everyone's great disappointment, due to the attack on Ukraine, with a redistribution of mobilities to the two later project meetings. The pupils' contributions were partly presented there and partly made available to everyone in the TwinSpace. At the Neuss project meeting (C3), the participants got to know several "members" of the Germanic language family thanks to the regional situation and retraced in creative learning phases how the independent regional languages developed in chronological order. The focus here was on broadening horizons regarding "the Germanic people" and the socio-cultural reasons for change within a language family. Through demanding research work as well as humorous theatre pedagogical experiences, corresponding excursions and joint celebrations, the participants got to know "Germany as a migration country". The 4-day project meetings were structured in the same way. A get-to-know-you phase via TwinSpace was followed by an opening ceremony the day after arrival, to which the school community and the public were invited. The work phases took place in the school, but also in city quarters, churches or museums, mostly "outside" because of Corona. A town hall reception was organised by each partner as well as excursions to places of interest related to the project theme. The pupils presented their group work results by means of (virtual) posters or other creative activities (still pictures, word totem). Evaluation and follow-up of the sub-projects took place in the same way as the preparation in the home schools. Due to the multiple postponement of the project meetings, new colleagues and especially groups of pupils had to be found and prepared for active participation in the Erasmus project. Although this broadened the "radius of action" immensely, it also generated a lot of extra work and frustration. Externally, the joint work on the Europe project strengthened the profile of the schools at regional level. Internally, the sustainable effect of the project lay in the structured and communication-oriented contact between the pupils and teachers, except for our partners from Gorizia, whose constant "virtual presence" was a great enrichment for the project. The great gratitude expressed by the pupils showed us that the trauma of the school lockdowns had been overcome through the real encounter weeks and that our youth can take responsibility together for the great challenges in Europe (freedom of the press, migration, environment and peace).