Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg caused a stir at the United Nations in September 2019 with her blistering criticism of world leaders' inaction on climate change:“My message is that we'll be watching you.This is all wrong.I shouldn't be up here.I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean.Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!“The movement Thunberg founded, Fridays for Future, refers to how she went on strike every Friday to protest againstthe lack of effective climate legislation on a governmental level and is picked up by a large number of school students internationally but also at the three schools participating in this project: Germany, Poland and Estonia. The title of this Erasmus+project “#tgif–Thank God it’s Future“ obviously combines both: a pun of Thunberg’s protest movement as well as a commonly known Hashtag used in social media by many teenagers. On the whole, awareness for climate change among the students has increased but there is still room for improvement when it comes to personal life and every day school. All three schools and their environment have a great development potential in the field of environmental protection, and therefore, we see a need for action in the following areas: 1. From a scientific perspective, we recognize the environmental impact agriculture and farming practices have on the ecosystem. The quality of groundwater affected by the amount of nitrogen as well as insect death is a problem. Yet agriculture plays an important part in the local economy of Bornheim and the school is surrounded by fields and orchards. So we need to address these problems and find solutions. 2. From the perspective of the students’ representatives, we can see on the one hand that pollution is being caused by the parents’ car emissions at schools and on the other hand that wasted resources in everyday school and private life are a problem (in Zawiercie, Poland). 3. From a social science perspective, we can see that students do not take responsibility for individual actions, which have a deep impact on environmental issues. A lack of solidarity within a globalized world can be generally observed and is discussed in Tallinn, Estonia. An overall objective of our project is to increase ecological awareness among the students and their environment by • building insect houses (“Homes4future“), • creating a catalogue of measures for an environmentally friendly school, • creating a cycling map for the commute to school, • developing and presenting an EU business game, • reflecting on the project and personal environmental attitudes by creating a sculpture with all participating schools All of this is examined from different perspectives, namely: • the perspectives of 3 cooperating nations, • the perspective of 30 students with ages ranging from 13-18 years from Lower and Upper Level and three different types of schools, • the perspectives of natural sciences as well as social sciences and the students’ committee in an interdisciplinary way. The methodology to be used in carrying out this project is active learning. During this project students are involved in the learning process more directly and create the outcome with their own ideas and are responsible for the project’s result. Students participate in the learning process and are actively involved in the project work. That is why students create products with each exchange; the results and the potential long term benefits are obvious: an insect hotel (incl. teacher’s guide and materials) used in biology classes, a catalogue of measures used at school and in private life, a cycling map for the commute to school, a business game (incl. teacher’s guide and materials) used in social sciences classes and a final sculpture to visualize students‘ hopes and wishes for the future. Learners participate in activities and work on projects and tasks while they simultaneously think about the work done and the purpose behind it and then change their attitude and behavioral pattern towards sustainable development – personally and at school. All of this is achieved on the one hand by think-pair-share activities known from cooperative learning, an educational approach to organize classroom activities as well as academic and social learning activities. On the other hand this project is also designed to use different principles like independent work, group work and project work. Also interactive collaboration, e.g.via the use of laptops and tablets, video conferences, eTwinning and Instagram, play a vital role in this project. Related activities conducted during our four mutual visits are the following: Students take part in active climate workshops; visit a forest and cooperate with a a forest district manager; visit an open air museum to raise awareness for the ecological development throughout the history of the country. All activities performed contribute to achieving environmental awareness.
#tgif - Thank God it's Future": Under this motto, young people of different ages and from different types of schools from Poland, Estonia and Germany became active against climate change. In the first part of the project, the students and the respective other schools got to know each other online and discussed environmental pollution in Poland and Germany. The students from Poland and Germany thought together about what they could do themselves to actively protect the environment. The answer was: We want to and can avoid unnecessary emissions if we ride our bikes more often. Under this motto, the children created a map showing the best possible route by bicycle to their respective schools. The bicycle maps were presented to each other by the students. Likewise, these were discussed in the class teacher's lesson to expand the target audience. A second area in which the students have become active is the problem of insect mortality. Here, the students learned a lot about the bee in an online meeting that lasted several days, found out the different locations of an insect hotel in the respective schools, procured the right materials for the insect hotel and built it. The insect hotels are now in place at the respective schools. In the future, the insect hotel at the European School will be the subject of biology lessons and will be maintained by the school gardening group. The project course belonging to the Erasmus+ project, which consisted of upper school students, developed a parlor game during the school year 21/22. The aim of the parlor game was to make the discrepancy between economy and ecology tangible enough for younger students to trigger an "aha" experience. It was important that the game could be played without help and that - in addition to the learning effect - it was also fun. An English and a Polish version of the game were sent by mail to the Polish school and tested together online. The experiences that the students had while playing the game were evaluated afterwards. The game should be able to be used in the classroom in the future and will be available for pick-up there after the school library of the Europaschule Bornheim has moved. At the end of the project, after a joint brainstorming session, sculptures on the topic of #tgif were created and presented to each other. The Polish and German students created very different artistic implementations, but each in its own way reflecting the project content. Due to the pandemic, the mutual visits were replaced by e-mails among the students and video conferences, some of which lasted several days. Thus, the original goals - especially those of social learning - could not take place interculturally.