Let’s Walk Together to Handle the Obstacles Erasmus Project

Project Title

Let’s Walk Together to Handle the Obstacles

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Integration of refugees; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Due to problems in many parts of the world like war, economic recessions and human rights violations, most families are forced to leave their homeland and sail to habitable environments as refugees. Our schools have great responsibility to meet the basic needs (education, adaptation to social environment, culture and traditions, etc.) of the children of families who have to migrate to our country and many parts of Europe.
The main objective of our project proposal is to have the refugee students actively participate in education by presenting them the host language learning, to ensure their academic lives to be sustainable and to bring the early school drop which is stressed in the European 2020 strategy to less than 10% in cooperation with our stakeholders. As a result of the survey we shared and implemented in our eTwinning project we continued together, it was reported that the biggest obstacle faced by refugee students was learning the host language. Among the priorities of the European Social Model outlined in the Lisbon strategy are the emphasis on investment in people, in particular on education investments. As a result, our project proposal is directly in line with the vision of Europe 2020 and the vision of our stakeholders.
Learning the host language will enable the refugee students to trust themselves, to express themselves and to gain an identity in their environment. This will allow students to break the prejudice in the social environment and lead to treat them with tolerance. In addition, it is important to inform the refugee students about the necessity of host language learning and to use this necessity as a tool for an inclusive, sustainable and lifelong education. For refugee students facing multilingualism, it is aimed to make them feel that they are equal in school and society by creating opportunities to reflect their own culture and traditions without dissolving their mother tongue. Teachers who will take an active part in the project will experience professional innovation and the outcomes will be added to the curriculum to create versatile refugee students and a qualified education program will be implemented for them.
Turkey (coordinator), Greece, Portugal and Spain are included in the project. We will have the opportunity to see, evaluate and apply our activities and studies with our stakeholders in the international arena to enable refugee students to acquire the host language. A total of 4 Learning-Teaching Training will be held and 20 students and 8 teachers from each country will participate in these activities. Participants will be composed of refugee students with disadvantaged backgrounds in terms of education, economy and cultural, and teachers who are able to cooperate and have the ability to represent their schools in Europe.
All of our mobilities include ‘Short-term exchanges of groups of pupils’;
LTT1 (Empathy): Coordinator Turkey is the host. Refugee students from different countries will join each other with the ‘welcoming party’, introduce their own culture and country, and discover the feelings of each other by doing drama with their peers. The educational problems encountered will be discussed with the participants and the students will learn to use a web 2.0 tool for the host language acquisition.
LTT2 (Bridge Between Languages): In this LTT hosted by Portugal, the activities for the host language learning will be combined with digital technology, and refugee students will develop the use of web 2.0 tools in this direction.
LTT3 (Case Study): In Greece, the use of technology in the host language learning will reach to a higher level and the participants will participate in social activities.
LTT4 (Cultural Diversity): In the mobility hosted by Spain with a comprehension of ‘A different country and culture means a new world’, the participants will reflect their own elements and the best practices will be exchanged.
In the LTT activities of this project which adopt the 21st century education concept, 4C, TPACK, solution-oriented and collaborative methods which develops empathy and learning skills will be at the forefront. Refugee students will develop creativity, multicultural collaboration, problem-solving and work-in-pair skills with the activities they will do on both local and national basis. At the same time, by learning about innovative methods and tools (digital technology, web 2.0, etc.), they will have a say in the classroom environment by being more active, and create a good relationship with their peers and teachers. With our project, which will have positive effects in the medium and long term, it will be ensured that the students will keep up with the school environment, increase their academic success, and the rate of early school leaving will decrease eventually. In addition, the project outputs will be shared with other schools, NGOs and policy makers in each country, and soon after, the project will have been announced to a wider audience.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 102408 Eur

Project Coordinator

TOKI ORTAOKULU & Country: TR

Project Partners

• GYMNASIUM KERAMOTIS
• IES CERRO DE LOS INFANTES
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Vilela