We pursued following goals: - improve teachers ' intercultural, professional, general competencies working with migrant students in multicultural classroom; - gain knowledge in intercultural conflict management, learn to apply methods solving atypical problems in multicultural community; - improve integration of migrant students, their families into educational process, their socialization in gymnasium community; - internationality development (learn about possible challenges, problem-solving methods working with refugees/migrants from countries outside EU, learn how to apply them; cooperate with Europe educational institutions with similar problems and experience solving such problems to improve psychological climate and quality of educational process; improve skills of teachers by introducing advanced methods of working with migrants).
Kaunas A.Pushkin gymnasium (now Kaunas International gymnasium) is multicultural educational institution where students of 18 nationalities study. According to 2019 external audit assessment and SWOT analysis, we realized that teachers face a serious challenge – integration of arriving migrant students in educational process, gymnasium community, but teachers lack deeper knowledge of intercultural competence. Our country's experience working with migrant students is limited, so it was important to gain good practice and knowledge from other countries dealing with migrants’ integration problems. Also, need to carry out project was decided by goal of gymnasium strategic plan for 2019-2022 to mobilize gymnasium community for cooperation, changes and leadership forming distinctive gymnasium culture and gymnasium aim of the action plan for 2020 to improve work system with children of migrants, develop social skills of students, intercultural competences of students and teachers, striving to improve gymnasium psychological climate according to national mentality, learning level, abilities of each student. Project gained greater value during implementation, when in 2022 about 200 refugee students from Ukraine came to gymnasium.