Walls and Bridges Erasmus Project

Project Title

Walls and Bridges

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Inclusion – equity; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage

Project Summary

Our project was born to destroy walls and build bridges between students, teachers, parents, and other active citizens in Europe. The wall is a physical reality and a metaphor, as well, typical of all European and non-European cultures. It is the physical wall which was once built around the castles and the Medieval villages, and it marked boundaries, frontiers, and flanks; it is also the wall of prisons. Nowadays, it is the physical wall built around and among towns because of international tensions, political and religious differences. The wall is a metaphor of human limits, an obstacle to relationships and a set of conventions and prejudices we raise around us. The bridge links two countries, towns, or can be a symbol of unity, socialization, friendship, acceptance, dialogue, understanding each other, and the helping hand.

The idea was born from the needs of the schools to be able to deal with different ability students or coming from different cultural, religious, social, geographical, linguistic backgrounds and facing difficulties in learning and socializing. Providing basic skills in Literacy, Numeracy, ICT, and Foreign Languages was one of our main objectives, besides the cultural and intercultural experience. The project was an instrument to pull down physical and mental barriers, and for this reason contributing in the background knowledge on the topic, integrate and include those students, teachers, parents who have any kind of barriers and in this way lower the percentage of early school leaving in the participant schools.

Our team was containing of 6 schools from six different countries: Hungary as a coordinator, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Turkey worked together in a vertical project including students aged 12-18 from primary schools to secondary schools. All schools had some expertise and it helped them to share the tasks of the project. The schools are very different in the number of the students, from 75 to 2300. That is why sharing the educational methodology and showing each other how our schools work was a major point of the project work to collect best practices.

Our common work consisted of dealing with metaphors of the wall and the bridge in Literature, to learn and destroy stereotypes about the cultures and acquire logical, technical, linguistic, literal, and numeric skills. To destroy the barriers, we experienced and worked on new methodology, improving non-verbal skills-composing music, using ICT with own lyrics, doing sports together, learning different types of dances from the countries’ culture. The verbal communication was also developed through our common language-English- which was given extra support on in each participant school. Students acquired information about the building techniques and materials of the walls and bridges. We worked on researching Cultural Heritage Sites in our own neighbourhood regarding walls and bridges, many visits were organized, promotional leaflets were made and presented to each other. The Bank of Knowledge was the topic of our regular videoconferences, where the students could show their personal strengths, in this way building up personality skills. Art was an important path in the project, the pictures and drawings representing the two symbols were exhibited in Italy. The pandemic situation had a lot of negative effects on the implementation, not being able to work at schools and do mobilities, however a great artistic material was born, with the title ‘Walls in COVID time’, exhibited in all the participant schools.

Individual, group work, cooperative techniques, round table discussions, presentations, seminars, games, exhibitions, concerts, and drama are just some of the methodologies which were used during these 3 years.
The results and products are leading to impact: we produced a material, which helped the schools in destroying the barriers, tackle the school drop-out and the disadvantaged students of all types. The Common Inclusion Program was tested and disseminated in all partner countries. The other result is the final event-the musical ‘You Will be Found’ which summarized the major goals and acquired soft skills.
The linked associations and organizations were an added value in the project and the work with them will ensure sustainability and impact in long-term.

Unifying in the difference: we think this was one of the most important issues of our project, promoting the knowledge within the different European nationalities, to create a network of relations through which we can know each other, exchange our ideas, experiences, and fears.

Project Website

http://twinspace.etwinning.net/74348/home

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 142159,8 Eur

Project Coordinator

Diósdi Eötvös József Német Nemzetiségi Általános Iskola és Alapfokú Muvészeti Iskola & Country: HU

Project Partners

• ITCG Ferruccio Niccolini
• Mehmet Akif Ersoy Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi
• IES Severo Ochoa
• AGRUPAMENTO DE ESCOLAS DR. JORGE AUGUSTO CORREIA
• Nya högstadiet i Ryd