The Fall of the Berlin Wall – 30 years later – finding and overcoming borders Erasmus Project

Project Title

The Fall of the Berlin Wall – 30 years later – finding and overcoming borders

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: Creativity and culture; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage

Project Summary

One aim of the project is the wish to give the participants the possibility to get acquainted with the other country, its culture and language and to apply and increase the previous learned things by working on a common project.
Saving and mediating historical knowledge is an important act and another aim of the project that we want to reach with our topic “30 years fall of the Wall – finding and overcoming borders.” The participants will deal with history in an interactive and intermedia way. So they will acquire new knowledge and develop an awareness of history which will have a lasting effect. While working active with digital media, the participants will be sensitized to the safe handling of them. Dealing with the term “borders” will point the pupils to differences in culture, living environments and the society and it will prepare them for a life in an open Europe.
Learning and working together is the main focus of our project. It includes to acquaint the pupils with political, economic and social factors, to deal with languages, traditions and habits and finally it opens the pupil’s minds to accept different ways of life.
To implement these aims, we want to concentrate ourselves on a versatile and diversified treatment of the focal points our project. The work in mixed teams, visitations of historical places, the development of digital end products and print products are the centre of our exchange experiences which will start in Berlin. In November 2019 the festivities of the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall take place in Berlin, what means a perfect base and a unique chance for dealing with our topic. In a multitude of events the participants are allowed to examine how history is made alive and how it is treated and adopted in different ways today. The pupils will reflect their experiences in a diary and in guided group talks.
These first experiences will be engrossed during a second exchange in Oelsnitz, where the main point will be the “Friedliche Revolution 1989”. After the intense meditation with the topic “fall of the Berlin Wall”, its history and the German partition by the inner-german border, the pupils shall deal with the different meanings of “borders” and they shall try to transfer the historical facts to a new level – to their own life and the life of their families. You can find borders everywhere and in each society. They can be anchored in pupil’s minds and they can be vanquished, too. Afterwards the pupils shall be able to review themselves, their actions and their environment in a (self-) critical way. So they shall expand their own horizon and develop the personal tolerance.

Participants are pupils between 12 and 15 years, including their parents. Further participants are: teachers, economic representatives and representatives of the municipal community.

Activities:
– participation in historical events according to the learning matters in history and political sciences
– visiting historical places and museums
– language animations
– team games
– work on footage for trailers, presentations and other illustrative material
– preparation of a bilingual history-book, project files and a personal diary
– interviews withs politicians and contemporary witnesses
– country-specific evenings
– Analyzing of methods by teachers and pupils, deducing improvements

Results:
– a bilingual history-book
– movie trailers about important historical sights
– illustrative material and presentations about different focal points of the project
– a diary about the historical events in Berlin
– a project file about the inner-german border in Mödlareuth

Effects:
Pupils:
– strengthening of educational and social competences
– strengthening of the tolerance and self-confidence
– improvement of the historical knowledge
– improvement of the own horizon referring to an open Europe
– overcoming of lingual and cultural borders
Teachers:
– improvement of pedagogical competences
– enlargement of a vocational knowledge as a teacher
– an increase in motivation
– develop the understanding for life, education, politics and economy in Europe, especially in Germany and France

Long term benefits:
In the end of the project all pupils shall have increased their historical knowledge, their language competences and their awareness of social life and tolerance. They have the ability to analyze their own strengths and weaknesses as well as they are able to deal with cultural differences and foreign languages, habits and traditions. The pupils also should be able to learn and to use knowledge and language of European partner countries, especially France and Germany, autonomously.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 35608 Eur

Project Coordinator

Oberschule Oelsnitz & Country: DE

Project Partners

• LYCEE ELIE FAURE