The Lycée Elie Vinet in Barbezieux, which has a tradition of openness, has decided to embark on the Erasmus + adventure, through a "strategic partnership in education". 3 other highschools located in the European Union will participate in the 2-year project entitled "Let’s be Europeans!": : "IES LAKUA" in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain), "Rainer-Maria Rilke Gymnasium" in Icking (Germany), "Aarhus Gymnasium" in Tilst (Denmark). The Elie Vinet high school is a human-sized general and technological secondary school located in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. It welcomes about 600 students from rural areas, sometimes distant ones, and the small town of Barbezieux (5,000 inhabitants). Over the past few years, the European project has been weakened and challenged. A team of motivated teachers has decided to act in order to awaken a sense of European belonging among young people, in offering them the opportunity to participate in a collaborative project of European dimension, thus allowing them to interact with young people from different backgrounds and to discover the opportunities offered by mobility. 37 pupils from Elie Vinet High School will participate in the project and collaborate with 56 pupils from the three other European schools (12 Danish pupils, 15 German ones and 29 Spanish ones) . Their work will be supervised by 4 teams of teachers (foreign languages, history and geography, science, philosophy, civic education, arts, music). Each year, exchanges will be organized, including activities related to the chosen topic. Each pupil will travel at least once to one of the partner countries. Each participant will, in turn, host a pupil from a partner high school when Elie Vinet hosts a meeting. Indeed, family accommodation will be privileged so as to create authentic exchanges. The objectives are: - to develop social capacities among young people, their autonomy and their ability to actively participate in the democratic life of Europe - to develop the pupils' skills in many fields (ICT, team work, social relations ...) - to make pupils more active when thinking of their course choice, give them ambition, both in terms of studies and choice of a career - to promote the learning of foreign languages. - to promote and implement the mobility of pupils and students in Europe. - to create a sense of European belonging through interculturality - to improve their knowledge of the EU history and achievements - through education and culture, to examine the challenges that Europe will face. - to enrich and diversify teaching practices 3 themes that are at the heart of the European project have been identified by the different partner schools: “European Remembrance” (memories of the European construction and cross-views of different countries, common historical and cultural heritage), “Yesterday’s and Today’s Migrations” (migratory routes: what is at stakes for the future? For Europe?), “Towards a Sustainable Europe” (sustainability of the European project through environmental issues and interculturality). The work that will be done during the mobilities is part of a collaborative work carried out thanks to computer tools (eTwinning, Skype, social networks ...). Pupils will work in partnership with local and national organisations dealing with these issues. During the mobilities, the pupils will meet local and European representatives. They will do some creative writing about migrants and migration, but also try to create lyrics for the European anthem, make reports, videos, study how SDGs are implemented at a local level, and create slideshows, blogs, exhibitions, draw-my-life. Meetings with professionals are also planned so as to accompany pupils in their orientation course choice in a different way (e.g parliamentary assistant or translator-interpreter). The climax of this project will be the European week organised in Barbezieux in February 2021. During this week, the 4 partners will present their achievements, and debates that are specific to the different parts of the project will be organized. Throughout the project, but also once it is achieved, the 4 partner high schools will share their experience in presenting the result of their work to other pupils, families, teachers, schools, local businesses, local and regional communities, organisations, charities ...), in their respective countries, through a variety of media (press, digital spaces and sites, local and regional television, media libraries, ...). The hope is to create links between the different participants, links that will last once the project is over, and to educate future European citizens.
Our project entitled "Let’s be Europeans!", meant to last for two years, from September 2019 to June 2021, involved four secondary schools located in the European Union: "Lycée Elie Vinet" in Barbezieux-Saint-Hilaire (France), "IES LAKUA" in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain), "Rainer-Maria Rilke Gymnasium" in Icking (Germany) and "Aarhus Gymnasium" in Tilst (Denmark). This project, supervised by 4 teams of teachers, enabled the collaboration, around common themes, of a hundred or so volunteer pupils of the same age group from the four partner schools, among whom 47 French, 12 Danish, 15 German and 29 Spanish. As the European project is being weakened or even questioned, the initial objective of the project was to reawaken a sense of European belonging among young people by offering them the opportunity to participate in a collaborative project of European scope. It gave them the opportunity to exchange and collaborate with young people from different backgrounds. The initial project also foresaw various mobilities but only one could be carried out due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the young people involved in this project kept exchanging all along the two years through digital tools and distance work. The aims: - to develop social capital in young people, their autonomy and ability to participate actively in the democratic life of Europe - to develop pupils' skills (ICT, teamwork, social relations, etc.) - to make pupils more active in their choice for further education, to give them ambition - to encourage the learning of foreign languages. - to promote and implement mobility for pupils and students in Europe. - to create a sense of European belonging through interculturality - to improve their knowledge of the EU history and achievements - through education and culture, to become aware of the challenges that Europe will have to face - to enrich and diversify teaching practices Three themes that are at the very heart of the European project were chosen to achieve the following objectives: Memories of Europe (memories of how, why the EU was built in the 4 different countries), Migrations Yesterday and Today (migratory routes: what are the challenges for the EU?), For/Towards a Sustainable Europe (sustainability of the European project through environmental issues and interculturality). The participants worked in various ways (courses, workshops, seminars, but also at a distance when circumstances required it). Inter-school collaborative work was carried out in using computer tools (eTwinning, videoconferencing, social networks, etc.). Whenever possible, meetings were organised with local organisations and professionals in order to enhance the value of commitment and expand the young people's horizons. For two years, the participants had the opportunity to study the history of the European construction and migration as well as the implementation of the EU's SDGs, to take part in a logo competition, to meet various organisations and to collect testimonies (migrants, young people who had taken part in European mobility schemes, elected representatives committed to sustainable development, etc.), to write articles on the subject and to participate in a discussion forum. ...), to write bilingual short stories and put them into words, produce and exchange a wide variety of documents (surveys, questionnaires, videos, slide shows, draw-my-life creations, news commentaries and debates on the project themes), organise actions and awareness-raising days in their respective schools (Europe-to-go day, clean-up actions and energy saving challenges, Erasmus Days...) In the initial project, exchanges were planned every year and each student was to travel at least once to one of the partner countries. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, only one of these exchanges took place, in Aarhus, Denmark, in February 2020, where 45 pupils (15 Danish, 9 German and 21 French) met and cooperated on visits, meetings and activities linked to Sustainable Development. The European Week initially planned in Barbezieux as a culmination of the project with all the partner schools, could not take place but was maintained at local level in the form of "Erasmus Days" in May 2021 during which the final achievements were disseminated and highlighted. The whole educational community was involved in these days through exhibitions (in the school and in the local council multimedia library), European meals, a public reading of the bilingual short stories and a closing ceremony of the project. Despite the difficulties linked to the pandemic, this project allowed the creation of links that we hope will last for a long time between our pupils who are no doubt the European citizens of tomorrow.