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!
