in Estonia

representated by Liis Raal-Virks

Pärnu Ühisgümnaasium was founded in 1861 and is the eldest school in town. The student body of Pärnu Ühisgümnaasium consists of 380 students, 16-19 years of age, and 33 teachers. Pärnu Ühisgümnaasium is a place where learning is valued. The teachers appreciate the principle of lifelong learning. The students can compile their own curriculum based on their interests and competences. It is the only school in town and in the whole county and one of the few in Estonia where modular study is applied. Studying in the school is interesting and varied as the school is a modern and innovative institution which applies the newest principles in education. The school has a modular study system, every student has to choose two modules from ten: Languages, Business and Economy, Architecture and Art, Sciences, Media, Health and Sport, Creative industry, Philosophy and Social Studies, Informatics and International relations. The school motivation for this project lies in its modular study and in its aim to establish a more efficient interdisciplinary approach. The project would integrate the different modules as Languages, Architecture and Art, Media, Creative Industry, Philosophy and Social Studies, Informatics and International relations. Thus, the project would promote cooperation between the teachers and students of different modules which is essential to create a strong and united staff and community of students. The other reason for being motivated to participate in that project is the particularity of the students community of the school: among Estonians, there are students whose parents are Russians, Ukranians, Georgians, and representatives of small finno-ugristic ethnic groups as ingerians (ingerlased) and karialians (karjalased). The school has taken part in various international projects since 2001. The key persons of the projects would be the school's project manager Liis Raal-Virks, an experienced Erasmus+ coordinator, English teachers, a music, art, IT, media and philosophy teacher. The project coordinator will nominate a vice-coordinator in order to make the possible taking over smoother and easier for the project team. The school's expertise lies in successful experiences in organizing the international events and song festivals to make other linguistical and cultural communities more visible in our society and in carrying out the debates and philosophical debating tournaments. These are the two project activities and events (song festival and a debate) that will be organized and held in the Estonian school during a learning teaching training activity. Since 2013, the school has held a song festival called "Russian Song" to promote tolerance between Russian speaking and Estonian speaking communities in Estonia. If the project gets the grant, the school will hold an international music festival called "Song of Minorities" to promote tolerance towards the minorities living in our 6 countries.

representated by Nina Tsoneva

Our organisation is a public secondary school , the biggest in the municipality, that includes one town and 16 villages. There are 56 teachers who work there and they teach about 650 students aged 7- 19. Students are taught general education as well as intensive English and IT classes. Most students come from underprivilidged backgrounds as the region we live in has a high rate of unemployment. Most parents work abroad and students are taken care of by their grandparents. The region is also of a mixed population; Christians, Muslims and Roma. Despite the various difficulties that arise because of the above mentioned reasons, our students are great in both studying and and interpersonal relationship. As an educational institution we constantly search for ways to teach them to live together in peace and that is our basic motivation to join this project. It is another opportunity for us, the teachers to involve our students in activities together with peers from other countries in an attractive way that allows them to express their creativity, which they love doing. We hope that by including the most isolated students we will help them feel important and that is how we hope to boost their confidence. Last but not least we are sure that by improving their English language and social skills they will perform much better at school.The key people in charge of running the project will be two English teachers, one Head teacher and one Social studies teacher. In case these people leave their posts their roles will be taken over by another English language teacher, a History teacher, an Art teacher and the other Head teacher. The two English teachers and the Head teacher are richly experienced in carrying out international projects, one of the English teachers has attended two Erasmus+ training courses related to Drama in education. We have taken part in various national Drama in English contests and won first prize every time with our youngest students. All the teachers in charge of running the project speak English and are good at using technologies for communication and project work. We have etwinning accounts and use the platform to work on various projects. We are also experienced in taking part in and organising various multicultural events, like festivals, national integration projects, folklore and dance competitions and charity events.

in Portugal

represented by Dionisio Ferreira

Agrupamento de Escolas de Resende is composed by all the schools that exist in the Council of Resende and they have about 1500 students. Our schools include Infant, Primary and Secondary teaching with ages from 3 to 18 years old. Escola Secundária Dom Egas Moniz is a secondary school with 760 students distributed through classes from the 7th grade (12 years old) till the 12th (18 years old) grade. Resende is a small village situated in the North of Portugal and all the pupils come from the surrounding area. It is a rural region and the students families seem not to enjoy very stable economical positions. Another serious problem which affects the students quality of life is the fact that the majority of them have to spend more than 40 minutes in public transports in order to get to school. In order to enter a more European framework (both as regards cultural and economical standards) the priority of the school is to offer teachers and pupils the possibility of participating into Erasmus+ projects: in fact to participate to an Erasmus+ project will be a valuable experience for both students and teachers, since it will give them a chance to get in touch with other European Education systems and cultures. To be able to attain this goal the school curriculum focuses onto foreign languages (English and French), Computer technology, Arts and Sport subjects; also great attention and care are given to extra curricular cultural activities like educational contests, sport competitions and cultural tours. The school also provides regular cultural subjects (Science) and vocational courses. The school has significant experience in European programmes such as Comenius and Erasmus+ projects. The Erasmus+ team consists of dedicated professionals who have developed important ways of working especially in the topic of the project. Our teachers have acquired a number of skills, such as project management, reporting, analysis; creating evaluation tools, organizing the mobility of young people and adults, teamwork, the use of modern technologies: the creation of Twinspace on the platform (one of the dissemination and informative channels) to put developed materials, presentations, movies, etc). We have obtained the "eTwinning Quality level". Apart from this, the school has experience (which could be transferable to the project) in training teachers on the scope of organization of educational projects, diversified curricular offers, the importance of non-teaching staff in the achievement of the school education project, collaborative supervision and professional development and planning strategic action to promote the quality of learning.

in Gaziantep, Turkey

represented by Ertugrul Sivakcigil

Aktoprak anatolian highschool has been founded in 2010. Our school is located in Aktoprak neighborhood which is in Þehitkamil district in Gaziantep. The distance between city center and our school is nearly 22 km. Our school has 41 teachers, 700 students, 1 officer, 2 janitors. We also have 20 classes, 4 labs, 1 library, 1 conference room, 2 prayer rooms, 4 playfields (one of them is indoor) including basketball, football, volleyball fields. There is a sport club in our school. Our students can attend this club and spend their spare time productively. In addition, our students attend inter-highschool competitions such as basketball, football, athletics, knowledge contests etc. And they win lots of medals. We have a powerfull staff. All of our teachers are young and proficient in their branches. We provide many opportunities to our students. Our school is equipped with latest technology including smartboards, tablet computers, labs, etc. We attend scientific fairs such as TUBYTAK. Last year we made exhibitons for our e-twinning projects. students join to all of projects and they are in them actively. Our aim is to improve ourselves and to do best for our school. We want to provide new opportunities to our disadvanteged students. Our aim is improving cultural relationship. As we all know, we have a border with Syria. Because of the war in there, a lot of refugees had to immigrate to our country and stayed here. We host thousands of refugees. Refugee children go to Turkish schools. We do our best to integrate them into our system. We treat them with respect and tolerance. Our aim is also to introduce different cultures to our students. We want them to make empathy and look issues from different perspectives. Because our culture values human life and human rights. Neighborhood is very important in our culture. So we welcome with open arms all refugees. Project coordinator will be Ertuðrul SIVAKCIGÝL who has been in Erasmus+ Project with his latest school. He learnt how to coordinate projects. He made 3 e-twinning projects last year and in this year he is in 4 e-twining projects. Our school principal attended Comenius and youth projects as a part of European Union. They went to abroad and gained experience about projects for many times. Also he supports our projects with his experience. We have more than 10 teachers who are working actively in e-twinning projects. All participants need to learn how to integrate the refugee students in our education. They need to know how we can understand them, and teach subjects. Also they need to learn European education system to integrate the subjects that refugee pupils learn in our curriculum. In the same time all of them help us to implement, to disseminate and evaluate the project in Turkey. Also our Project coordinator is responsible for our communication among all partners. Our school is ready for new adventures.

in La Reunion, France

represented by Aline Fouilhoux

GE Volksgarten

represented by Susanne Gründler

At our school (GE Volksgarten, Mönchengladbach, Germany) there has been busy a working group (MUT = Miteinander unterwegs-Team) for several years, in which colleagues talk about problems in dealing with pupils and parents from other cultures and with different religions. The goal of this group was to defuse conflicts arising from ignorance and misunderstandings and to deepen mutual understanding. At our school there are students and parents from many European countries (including Turkey), but also many countries from Africa and Asia are represented as countries of origin. In our school, we like to emphasize that this diversity is not a burden but an opportunity to broaden your horizons for all those involved, to reduce prejudice and to see the future in a cosmopolitan way. With the increased admission of refugee children into all age groups and the resulting difficulties in integrating children without knowledge of German language, the desire to exchange ideas with other students in other European countries about their everyday problems, views and solutions arose. At first we thought of schools in the Netherlands, Belgium and France with starting points similar to those in NRW. But there were quite different constellations (see participating institutions) we found in search for interested schools, but they show how diverse the situation of migration in Europe is. Together we want to describe and analyze our respective situation, identify similarities and differences, talk about EU refugee policies, and examine the religious aspects of integration. For all involved students, parents and teachers, this will change the view of our everyday problems and lead to new strategies of solutions, which we can only find in intercultural exchange. Recognizable, sustainable and reproducible results should include two "products", a preamble for the school's house rules and how to create them in cooperation with teachers, students and parents, and a collection of sketches, theater scenes or even a complete play (Musical) on cultural integration (equality, variety, acceptance). Both goals could be tackled "in-house" at our school, but the MUT group has been on the spot for quite some time because we have too little exchange with views other than our German. Therefore, we would like to intensify the two goals of European exchange - also a bit as an ambassador for a "welcome culture". This includes the direct meeting of the participants and for this we need the money of the EU to pay for the mobilities and the dissemination.