On Friday the 20th of September 2024, a few of us German students, who were interested enough to get up in the middle of the night, got the chance to watch a popular german News Show, called “MoMa”. This special episode took place in Potsdam instead of Berlin, due to its main Topic: Landtagswahlen in Brandenburg. Landtagswahlen are the elections that define the parlament of each federal state. The show featured interviews with each party’s top candidate, concerning the most discussed issues: Education and Migration. Behind the scenes, we got to discuss our own questions with the candidates, some seemed thrilled to talk to us, others would have rather enjoyed their morning coffee without a bunch of curious teens. A few talks lead to cool selfies, others to frustration on both sides. Nonetheless a very successful event, that for sure helped us, 16+ year olds, who are allowed to vote, to make up their mind and be well prepared for a democratic decision-making progress this Sunday, 22th of September.
Our project was for a second time kindly invited to the capital of the Netherlands. Our partner school, ALASCA, opened its doors now for both staff and students and we were warmly welcomed to their school. Travel went smoothly (all schools were able to come by train except for the Spanish) and weather was good enough. For this third JSPM we were aiming at teaching our students the impact of our colonial past, the need for decolonialisation and the pitfalls of cultural stereotyping.
On Tuesday we immediately started with the workshop World Festival for which we invited the organisation Globi. The group was divided into three. The first lesson was a European pub quiz about facts from different European countries. The second lesson was a debating class in which the students had to take sides on particular topics and defend their position with arguments. The third lesson was a board game where students were confronted with intercultural dilemmas. With these three lessons our students learned a lot about how different cultures would make different decisions based on their own values, that you can take a position which you have to defend with arguments and that you should know some facts about a different culture. We thank our colleagues from Globi for this insightful day!
On Wednesday we had a very busy schedule. The topic of the day was decolonialisation and why we should decolonize our minds and culture in order for Europe to become more democratic. In the morning we got a workshop by Leen Alaerts from our associated partner UCLL about the colonial past. She designed her workshop on neurodidactic principles by focussing on feelings, knowledge-building and action-orientedness. The workshop was very insightful for many of our students about where racism and racial stereotypes came from, where you can find these stereotypes, why they are harmful and how we should change them. You can find the presentation on our project page. In the afternoon, the students got a tour through the renewed Wereldmuseum in which the colonial past of the Netherlands was explored. In the evening then we went to a lecture on how we could learn from a local community action in Africa in response to the climate crisis and how they created political support in low-information communities in order to foster climate resilience.
In Amsterdam too we did the obligatory sightseeing. We went on a boat tour through the canals of Amsterdam and we visited the Stedelijk Museum. In the end this mobility was one of our most informative mobilities yet. Looking forward to Spain!
Hace un mes que mis compañeros y yo formamos parte de un grupo Erasmus+ en París, Francia.
Aun habiendo participado en uno anterior, Berlín, estábamos muy nerviosos y asustados, eso se debe a la nueva situación presente, las condiciones dadas en la capital francesa no eran las ideales por los alarmantes avisos, afortunadamente los profesores fueron de lo más cercanos y tomaron precauciones ante toda sospecha.
Allí, los demás miembros del Erasmus+ nos acogieron perfectamente y convivimos en el hostal como una gran familia.
Por otra parte, nuestros compañeros franceses, que no estaban alojados allí, también trataron de acercarse a nosotros en el Instituto, programaron actividades grupales y guías por la ciudad que nos permitieron interactuar y así también, practicar varios idiomas. Nos encantó el tour, aunque rápido, por la ciudad, además del paseo por el río. En contra, hubo una actividad bastante aburrida sobre ejercer un cargo en el parlamento que duró toda la tarde y fue agotador.
El viaje tanto de ida como de vuelta fue tranquilo, aun habiendo tormenta.
Después de todo, el viaje fue muy divertido y nos permitió hacer amigos internacionales con quienes aún mantenemos contacto, además, nos permitió conocer un nuevo país y un sistema educativo diferente.
Paris speaks to the imagination. It is the city renowned for the French Revolution which sparked the constitution of many democratic reforms all across Europe. It is also a centre for culture and the capital of one of the most important countries of the European Union. Its leader, Emmanuel Macron, is a fervent supporter of the European Union. It is therefore a welcome coincidence that we met him on the street. Nevertheless, we did not come to meet Emmanuel Macron. Instead, our partner school Lycéee Teilhard de Chardin welcomed us in their beautiful school in the suburb of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. The goals of this project was discussing current affairs through the act of compromise making and getting to know the legislative process of the European Parliament in the Maison de l’Europe.
Travelling to a metropolis such as Paris is always a little adventure. Just weeks before we arrived, all across Europe news outlets spoke of a plague of bed bugs. Yet, on arriving, the Parisians did not seem bothered. Tensions were also rising and fear of a new terrorist attack in the capital of France grew, but yet again, Parisians do not care enough to let their lives go to a standstill. It was already this lesson that for some of our schools was eye-opening and a true culture shock. The warm welcome of our colleagues, however, made these fears disappear. They had first planned sports activities as a way of getting to know each other. This low-key activity was a great starter as it did not require much speaking.
In the afternoon we started with our first project-oriented activity. We were introduced to the importance of politics by a young French MP assistant (Yassine Kamili, Frédéric DESCROZAILLE’s local assistant). Afterwards, the students were divided into several teams. In these teams they had to find a goal which they had to promote (end to racism, end the climate crisis, etc.). Then they had to think of the different types of behavior they had to change to make this change in society happen. Then they had to come up with a campaign that spurred readers to adjust their behaviour. Finally, they made these posters online or by hand. You can find the results and the lesson plan on the project page.
The other project-oriented activity was the very informative workshop on the legislative process in the European Parliament. This hands-on workshop introduced the students to the different topics at hand, and how a member of the European Parliament needs to compromise with lobbyists, voters, countries, the different bodies of government in the EU, their own party, etc. This well-developed workshop was created by the European Parliament and you can do this in pretty much every European capital’s House of Europe.
Of course, a visit to the capital of France must involve some necessary sightseeing. The students had prepared a sightseeing tour along the different sights in the centre of Paris which had to do with democracy. We also took a trip on the Seine river with les bâteaux mouches. In the evenings we build relationships through fun activities such as bowling and a party on the final evening.
All in all, this trip was an enormous success. Students have learned a lot about current affairs, the way the European Parliament works and how difficult it is to change people’s behaviour. We are already looking forward to our next meeting!
Our first joint staff and pupil mobility was a great success. It is always a little exciting when you start with a huge project like this one, but the general vibe and spirit of this first meeting was one of collaboration, open communication and relationship building. We were being welcomed by our German partner school, Einstein-Gymnasium, who had organised everything and who were the perfect hosts for this first mobility. Objectives of this first meeting was getting to know more about how our brains worked ‘democratically’ and which values are important for a democratic European youth.
Our first full day kicked off in the ‘aula’ (lecture hall) of this beautiful school in the heart of Potsdam. Our hosts had prepared a series of games so that our pupils could get to know each other. In the afternoon, our colleague prof. dr. Gerhard Roth from the University of Bremen, gave an insightful lecture about the link between democratic behaviour and our brains. Prof. Roth was invited by us because our schools feel a need to deal with anti-democratic, sometimes outright violent behaviour. We feel that schools are the places for learning democratic values and behaviour, but there needs to be a school culture and teachers ought to have the necessary skills to teach them. Ours and prof. Roth’s hypothesis is that insight into why and how people act the way they do, will provide us with the tools to counteract or encourage certain types of behaviour. As schools are little societies on their own, a school should be democratic and promote this kind of behaviour. They should be safe spaces where students can practise these skills, but also where they are allowed to fail from time to time. This filled day gave us many insights to put in our daily practice, for which we thank prof. Roth.
For our second day, we invited our associated partners from the KiJuBB (Kinder & Jugendbeteiligung Brandenburg) to give us a workshop about European Youth Values. Students were first introduced into the different youth goals of the European Union, after which they had to choose one per group. Then they made a poster about this and suggested measures to reach this goal more easily. The workshop provided a useful way of introducing these democratic values to our students and to make them think across the national and school boundaries about what other people found important.
This visit to Potsdam also included some culture. Students were invited to participate in a guided tour of Potsdam by foot or on bike. The guided tours were made by the Potsdam students with an audience like ours in mind. These tours made us aware of the different sights and the history of the city of Potsdam. The last day we went to Berlin, where we visited the recently constructed Humboldt Forum. They had an exhibition called “Berlin global” about how the city of Berlin was an international crossroads for many decades and how this influenced both our image of Berlin and how Berliners looked at the world. It was a very thoughtful exhibition which stressed the importance of tolerance in our contemporary multicultural societies. After a quick tour of the main democratic sights in Berlin (the Reichstag building, the office of the German chancellor, etc.), our students had some free time in this bustling capital city.
During the last evening we organised a party for our students so that they could end this meeting with a fun activity. The meeting was a success and informed our students about the necessary democratic values and how to act democratically. They also established links across our boundaries and schools. The appetite for our next meeting is big!
Amsterdam, we all know it as a touristy city, famous for its tolerant and open minded atmosphere and attractive to all those who want to celebrate freedom. It was weird at first to arrive here for work but it might not come as a surprise that we came here together for the first time. There is something very idiosyncratic about the way the Netherlands deals with democracy and education. Freedom, open communication and responsibility are essential to a Dutch upbringing, something we as fellow Europeans can definitely learn from. In this way our meeting in Amsterdam was not only by its content but also by its context about our project’s goals: promoting European democracy in the classroom.
We were kindly invited to come to one of our partner schools where Tuba showed us around at first. ALASCA is a rather new school (since about 7 years) with a groundbreaking view on education. The curriculum and didactics are firmly rooted in the tradition of the ‘liberal arts and sciences’. Students no longer take individual subjects but they sign up for different modules where the different subject’s goals are offered in an integrated class. These didactics are reflected by the open architecture. The school is built around different ‘leerpleinen’ (learning squares), meeting spots for students to discuss and work on their tasks. Around these ‘leerpleinen’ one can find the classrooms, which can be clearly seen from the ‘leerpleinen’, further promoting transparency. Students have two classes a day and one class can take up to two hours and a half. One class is about 50 students but students can choose whether they want to follow the teacher’s pace in the classroom or their own pace in the ‘leerpleinen’. Two co-teaching teachers take up the role in one of the two environments.
It is definitely a new and refreshing way of approaching 21st-century education and only one step removed from what we learned in the masterclass on Strength-based Learning. The masterclass was taught by Karel Moons and Melanie Hall, two researchers connected to UCLL Leuven, who developed a type of didactics specifically tailored for a class with a great deal of cultural, intellectual and linguistic diversity. Originally made for the migrant classes in Flemish education (www.teachmi.eu), the principles of the masterclass strongly resembled the principles of our project and our current 21st-century classroom. The concepts from Strength-Based Learning depart from a competence-based view on didactics, where students proceed from one step to the next stop in order to achieve some goals, but rather focuses on and gives responsibility to the student’s strengths and abilities. It is partly up to the student to decide what he is or is not able to do. Strength-based Learning is also firmly rooted in the traditions of cooperative learning. Students are given responsibility, with guidance from their teacher, to choose how they go about performing the tasks. They have to communicate and collaborate with fellow students. The masterclass on Strength-Based Learning not only provides us teachers with a way to deal with the huge diversity in our 21st-century classrooms, but also gives us a metadidactic way of incorporating democratic values such as communication, opinion-making and compromising in our teaching methods.
After a good night’s sleep at the Volkshotel, we met up once again in ALASCA. This time we had a virtual lecture by prof. dr. Gerhard Roth from the University of Bremen planned. Prof. dr. Roth specializes in the neurological development of children and how this influences a child’s behaviour and social development. We were very curious about the insights prof. Roth could give us about the impact we could still have on student’s behaviour towards a more democratic attitude. Research has shown that most of a child’s social development already happens before they go to primary school. It is especially in this timeframe that we as a society have the most impact on a child’s future democratic behaviour. Of course, nothing is quite so deterministic and there are still plenty of options to deal with students with a more negative attitude. It was interesting to see what advice neurology could give us on classroom management and more specifically on how to approach students with a negative attitude. It has been shown that it is very important for teachers to come across as ‘trustworthy’ and true to democratic values right from the start of teaching a group of adolescents. Much of our behaviour is influenced by non-verbal and paraverbal communication, something we cannot control consciously. A teacher’s job is therefore not only one of skillful command of their subject, but also of a human and pedagogic component about being the change and leading by example in order to promote democratic values with their students.
A large component of our project is our collaboration with our for-profit partner iVox. We met up with Hans, the CEO of iVox, who kindly guided us through brainstorming the content of our little app. We discussed different types of questions and methods of achieving specific results. In the end we discussed the different questions we could possibly ask.
The Amsterdam meeting was the necessary follow-up for our kick-off meeting. It showed us the what and how of teaching our project and it strengthened the bonds between the different parties involved. Thank you very much for your support and cooperation.
Una delegación de dos profesores del IES Alto Palancia de Segorbe ha participado en la reunión inicial del nuevo proyecto “Act & React: towards Involved Students for a democratic Europe” cuyo acrónimo es Arise+. Este nuevo proyecto se enmarca dentro de la modalidad Erasmus+ KA 220 de asociación estratégica de educación escolar entre centros educativos. Este proyecto se inicia en este curso escolar, 2022, y tendrá una duración de tres años, hasta 2025.
Arise+ tiene como objetivo dar a conocer y promover, entre los jóvenes, la participación democrática y los valores sobre ciudadanía como miembros de la Unión Europea. El valor añadido de esta acción consiste en involucrar a los alumnos en el diseño de las diferentes actividades que conformarán el proyecto. Además se cuenta con la puesta en marcha de una serie de workshops dirigidos por profesionales de otros ámbitos como la neurodidáctica o el mundo empresarial. El material didáctico que resulte de esta iniciativa se desarrollará siguiendo la herramienta digital Teach&track que forma parte del anterior proyecto Erasmus+ “Future Skills 21”.
Foto: ARISE+: 5 países y 3 años para implicar a los jóvenes en la participación democrática como ciudadanos de la Unión Europea.
En este proyecto Erasmus+ colaboran diversos departamentos del instituto y participamos un total de cinco países europeos: Bélgica (Miniemeninstituut de Leuven), Alemania (Einstein-Gymnasium de Postdam), Francia ( Teilhard de París ), Holanda (ALASCA Esprit Scholen de Amsterdam) y España ( IES Alto Palancia de Segorbe). También incorpora a profesionales del mundo de la empresa como iVox, compañía dedicada a la investigación sociológica y estudios de mercado y el profesor Roth de la Universidad de Bremen, especialista en neurodidáctica. De esta manera, el IES Alto Palancia continua apostando por la internacionalización y dimensión europea de nuestro alumnado así como por la mejora de la formación continua del profesorado a través de intercambios de formación, enseñanza y observación de las buenas prácticas educativas.
La reunión inicial de Arise+ ha tenido lugar en Leuven (Bélgica) del 14 al 18 de noviembre. Durante cuatro días los coordinadores de los países participantes han sentado las bases de este proyecto de cooperación entre países europeos, en todos sus aspectos: estrategias, financiación, movilidades y actividades entre otros. A partir de ahora queda establecido el calendario de actuaciones que tendrán lugar desde este momento y hasta octubre de 2025. Esta experiencia ha sido muy enriquecedora y esperamos que este Erasmus+ KA 220 sea un éxito como lo fueron los anteriores “Strip to Identity” y “Future Skills 21”.
