The focus of our project is democracy. According to studies trust in democracy and democratic development is sinking amongst young people. As secondary schools we want to change the perspective of our pupils when it comes to democracy and give them a chance for a hands-on approach to democracy, influencing and decision making. School is a safe place for young people to try new things, to brainstorm, to discover and even sometimes fail - that is why this project as a combination of four schools, four European countries and four perspectives creates a safe and innovative ground for strengthening and generating democratic citizenship. It is important to work on a local level when it comes to influencing but the European approach gives the pupils a highly needed perspective on the importance of a united and cooperative Europe. These goals will be reached by the following schools: Mittelschule Zirndorf, located near Nuremberg in Bavaria, with approximately 450 pupils (aged 10 to 17) and 50 teachers. The school's profile is very broad: tablet classes and other digital teaching methods, environmental school, school without racism, emphasis on technical courses, preparing the students for their working life (e.g. practical internships during the academic year), etc. Etelänummi school is a secondary school for Finish speaking young people aged 12-16 located in Pietarsaari (Jakobstad). In the academic year 2018-19 there are 320 pupils in 23 classes with 35 teachers and 13 other staff. Salesianos San Jose School consists of 64 teachers 850 students at different levels. Furthermore, they have volunteers to give support extra-curricular lessons for our disadvantaged students. Salesianos San Jose School , located in the neighbourhood of Pizarrales in Salamanca, is the largest school subsidised by the state for Vocational Studies in Salamanca province, primary and secondary studies are taught as well. Our students are changing, they have more and more different needs, that is the reason why the management team aims to provide training for their teachers in different areas so that they can cover all the current needs: children with autism, cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, ADHD or language difficulties. The Osnova Sola Gorje school in Slovenia has 275 pupils in 15 classes and 31 teachers. Work and life at school are guided by VISION and MISSION OF OUR SCHOOL: Teachers work with parents to ensure that students acquire knowledge and develop skills for a responsible and happy life. The development of the school is planned in connection with the place in the field, culture, sport and tourism. The participating teachers will choose 8 pupils amongst a group of approximately 24 pupils for each project meeting. The teachers will take to account the student's motivation, interests and social and cultural background. Each participating school will have visited at least one foreign country by the end of the two year project. In regular school lessons we will prepare the students for the upcoming exchange meetings. Every project meeting will have their own theme and approach to democracy where perspectives will be changed. Democracy will be approached from different points of view (what if there were no democracy, how should we speak about democracy, peer-to-peer democratic conventions) in each meeting. Groups of four pupils from each participating country will exchange their perspectives on democracy. By creating a "digital diary" pupils will collect information about the country and school to safe memories for their classmates at home which will the basis of the obligatory "Book(s) of Weird" which will show "weird", "funny" or "bizarre" things in each country. By focussing on the prejudices and differences of our partner schools and countries the pupils will broaden their minds and learn to approach people from other cultural backgrounds open minded. This is the basic competence for democratic behaviour! During the two year project we would like to support the communication between teenagers in different countries. As a secondary school we want to change the perspective of our pupils when it comes to democracy and give them a chance for a hands-on approach to democracy, influencing and decision making.
Due to the developments in the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated travel restrictions, our Erasmus+ school project "Perspectives4Democracy" could only be partially carried out as planned. The project meeting in our partner school in Slovenia and the further work on project content during the school year had to be cancelled between March 2020 and July 2020. Further meetings between the Zirndorf middle school and our partner schools in Finland, Spain and Slovenia took place exclusively digitally. Due to the difficult pandemic situation and personal reasons, Finland left the project at the end of 2021. The Spanish and Slovenian partners were able to hold project meetings in person in December 2021 and February 2022, as they didn’t have any covid related travel restrictions. The teachers' meeting in October 2019 and the project meeting in January 2020 in Finland were carried out successfully and purposefully. All details on the project activities can be found in the interim report. In our school, working groups were set up for students who agreed to work actively and with commitment on the project content over a period of two years. As the first project task, the students from all participating countries were asked to design a thematically appropriate project logo, which was first voted on within the school. In the further course of the project, the respective winning logos were presented to the other countries via eTwinning and evaluated with a fixed number of votes. In addition, all students prepared for the project meeting in Finland by sending their exchange partners profiles in English. In addition, each country prepared a presentation in which it presented a partner country that had previously been determined. During the project meeting in Finland, the students held their presentations of the countries in English in front of everyone involved, including the Finnish school family. One of the project tasks during the stay was to find and, if necessary, take pictures of as many unusual and new events and things as possible. Finally, they should record their impressions in a kind of travel diary and share them with all other participants in the “Book of Weird” on eTwinning. As part of the democracy work, all the students came up with two possible concepts in which they could change aspects of their daily life that were relevant to them (e.g. introducing a swimming club). After the presentation of the two proposals, all other project participants voted for the project that they felt had the best chance of success. Back in Germany, the students shared their experiences abroad and ideas for implementing their concept, which they had designed in Finland, in the form of short presentations with the rest of the working group. In the further course of the working group meetings, the students researched the topic of the development of democracy in Germany over the last 150 years. The aim of this task was to compare the democracy timelines of all countries at the project meeting in Slovenia and to work out the similarities and differences. The project "Perspectives4Democracy" was published on the school homepage. In addition, a Facebook page of our project was created, which contains photos of the project meetings in order to inform parents, colleagues, relatives and friends about activities in a timely manner and to reach as large a group of people as possible. The local press also reported briefly on our Erasmus+ school project. Another newspaper report about our digital project activities appeared in the Fürther Nachrichten on November 24th, 2020. It was also planned that the "Erasmus" working group would introduce itself to an extended group of people as part of the "Open Day" at our school and offer smaller workshops (cooking country-specific dishes, photo exhibition, ...). Due to the developments in the Covid-19 pandemic, the "Open Day" was unfortunately cancelled. Detailed reports, in which the project itself and the "Erasmus" working group were presented, also appeared in the school's annual reports for the years 2020 to 2022.