Europa Project : Heritage, identity, future Erasmus Project

Project Title

Europa Project : Heritage, identity, future

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: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage

Project Summary

The Europa Project gathers 2 partners :
– The French school is St-Pierre High School made of a general and technological « lycée » with 450 students, associated with a « college » of 450 pupils as well, plus 80 teachers and members of staff. Most students (70%) come from middle-class and working class backgrounds. It is located in St-Brieuc in Brittany (France)The school is labeled “Lycée d’Europe” and its administrative manager is OGEC Groupe Scolaire Armor.
– The Polish partner is the Zeromski High School located in Bartoszyce, with 238 students from similar social backgrounds.

We are located from one end of Europe to the other, and, together, we have already taken part in a KA2 project through the Franco-Polish association “Côtes d’Armor/Warmie-Mazurie. It enabled us to get to know each other and resulted in an exchange and after in an Erasmus + project.

The aims of our project were:
– To make pupils work and learn by mutualizing with their partners.
– To strengthen the notion of European identity thanks to the cultural heritage that surrounds them. We would have liked to heighten the pupils ‘awareness of heritage sites and awaken their intellectual curiosity. We wanted to make them understand that each partner is surrounded by monuments with common roots and references. In that way, they should have become aware of their belonging to the same group, the European Union, which has common values and identity.
– To perpetuate the school exchange between our two schools and why not, open it to new partners already working with our schools.

Our project was a 2-year project and was divided into two parts:
– 2019-2020: group A with 30 French and Polish fifth-form students had to work on the seaside natural and cultural heritage of both countries.
– 2020-2021: group B with 28 French and Polish fifth-form students had to work on the inland natural and cultural heritage of both countries.

Until March 2020, our project was progressing well and was following the initially planned schedule: virtual meetings to organize the project, constitution of groups of students, meetings with Franco-Polish associations, research work on heritage sites, initiation into the creation of a website and QRcodes (not completed due to pandemic), organization of mobility (transport / accommodation / visits).

At the beginning of March 2020, the Poles were forced to cancel their mobility due to COVID19. We had been confined and placed in distance learning both in France and Poland.
Our partners reacted very quickly by rescheduling their visit at the beginning of June 2020. Unfortunately, in mid-April, we were obliged
to cancel the mobility of French people in Poland, scheduled for early May, and then, that of Poles in France at the beginning of June because we were still in distance education. We encouraged the students to continue their exchanges in English with their pen pals about their way of life, the heritage sites they should have visited, and of course, about the impacts of the epidemic on their daily lives.

During the summer 2020, we wrote the interim report. At the start of the school year, we formed a group of students who met with the Franco-Polish Association. On the French side, we were lucky not to be in distance learning. On the Polish side, the students were in distance education from March 2020 to the end of May 2021. The recruitment of Polish pupils for the project being done on the three levels of high school in Bartoszyce, the Polish colleagues found it impossible to have all the pupils together in video, their schedule was very busy. We were unable to set up virtual mobility.

We regret the fact of not having carried out our project : it was important for us and for our pupils to achieve it and our motivation was intact. On the French side, we have two key teachers unable to extend this adventure (transfer for family reasons for one teacher and long sick leave for the other).

In conclusion and despite all these difficulties, we hope to have awakened our students to the notion of European identity, notion that must be encouraged, especially in this period. We helped pupils to discover the heritage sites around them in order to deepen their cultural knowledge of the local area. The mobility did not take place but our students are still eager to go to Poland or France in the future : this is very positive for us. For our schools, we hoped that this project would motivate other colleagues to embark on this adventure, and it did!

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 12050,31 Eur

Project Coordinator

OGEC GROUPE ARMOR & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Stefana Zeromskiego w Bartoszycach