The Mediterranean sea: Mith and Hope. Erasmus Project

Project Title

The Mediterranean sea: Mith and Hope.

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Integration of refugees; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

At the time the project was raised to colleague teachers and the management of our school, the biggest topic at that time was that of migration and refugees. We have seen how these people were standing at the gates of Europe, which closed them and set them aside, without any chance to set in. Anyway, we have to say that the situation has changed very little. With the study and approach to students of this misfortune we wanted to reinforce the European dimension in the secondary education sector. The students who have worked on this project during the two years have become more open and receptive to other cultures and more respectful towards the immigrant students of our secondary school. In addition, the students who have taken part in the Long-Term Mobility, after working on the issues presented in the project and after living abroad, have understood what it is to be a migrant and have become more European, have learned a new language, have studied new subjects in addition to theirs, and have also integrated into a program similar to that taught in Spain. They have also worked on ICTs. For all these reasons, we think that their future work opportunities in our country, and abroad, will be easier for them. All this has made them compare the new culture to theirs, with its positive and negative issues and, as a consequence, they have learnt to value what they do in our school, how they study and the means they use, and have learnt to assess it in a positive way. In short, they have noticed how cultural diversity enriches them. The students have improved their own skills and those of group work and cooperation with their peers. During the two years of the project they have attended talks, conferences and exhibitions. Together with their partners they have made some way out to participate in our culture, often hardly known.
During the execution of our project a jobshadowing experience has been carried out by accompanying teachers. We have worked in the configuration of the schedules, we have been with our partner teachers, we have observed the methodology they use and later on we have presented it to the rest of the school community. A teacher has also travelled to the neighboring country, where he has conducted classes through CLIL methodology. The variety of Catalan spoken in our community has also been taken into account. During the CLIL teacher’s presentation, he has introduced words in Valencian and a comparison has been made with the Italian and many times with the Sicilian, since Sicily was part of the Crown of Aragon . They have exported our culture, our language and finally have made their partners understand it better. The same has been done by our partners in our school.
Contests have been held for students from both countries, a) realization-contest of the Project Logo, which has accompanied us during the two years of his life. b) micro- story contest in which an expert explained how it was done, the students wrote their own short story and a contest was held; c) a traditional music concert was also held where the influences of the Mediterranean peoples were reflected; they saw how instruments were made with waste materials. d) they have addressed the positive contact between the two communities by means of different cultural influences (art, gastronomy religion, lifestyles …) that have been produced in the Mediterranean area throughout history. Solidarity, migration, refugees, the situation of women in refugee camps have been worked together with NGOs, which has helped to better understand project issues.
In the end, an exhibition was held on everything that had been worked on during the two years, for which our machinery vocational school colleagues and their students manufactured a large tent. The murals made by the students were exhibited together with an exhibition of photographs provided by the Red Cross together with material from a refugee camp.
Finally we collected a survey from politicians and personalities, as well as members of the school staff, who responded to the question about what they thought on migration and refugees.
In conclusion, we should thank Erasmus + for carrying out projects of this nature, as they help to understand Europe better for teachers, students and families. They helped us have a richer vision of our differences, they also helped the students with worse economic backgrounds, and thus they have made our schools change for the better. After living an Erasmus+ experience like this in our school, it is no longer the same.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 66438,3 Eur

Project Coordinator

I.E.S. ANTONIO JOSÉ CAVANILLES & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Istituto Superiore Majorana