Today a dreamer,Tomorrow a leader Erasmus Project

Project Title

Today a dreamer,Tomorrow a leader

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: Pedagogy and didactics; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

The project context, the project objectives and the project results are summarized in the activities carried out. At the end, we briefly revisit the long-term benefits.
“Today a dreamer tomorrow a leader” is a project based on national/international activities, regular exchange of information (texts, presentations, videos, pictures, toys, brochures, legend books, story books, toy guides, traditional games) and mobilities of representatives (teachers/students). The basic objectives of promoting the dreams of young people and thus establishing their skills was achieved in the largest sense. The five main themes such as “toys, traditional games, culture, imagination, creativity and nature” were actively addressed and extensively worked on during the project.
In doing so, the schools focused on the fundamental problem of lack of creativity and ensured that students accomplished their activities more through practical execution rather than technical distraction. All organizing partners made sure to focus on traditional play, and many activities were done in the outdoors. It was reminiscent of the way older generations used to play, and you could notice a definite progression from the current way of playing. Among other things, this was implemented through making their own toys, the collective play of young people and educators, and long walks.
1st meeting in Turkey (Sultanbeyli/Istanbul)
The first meeting served to organize the upcoming meetings. The Turkish school was able to reconstruct the awareness of children’s thinking and play behavior through first acquaintance games and offered an insight into the Turkish play culture.
2nd meeting in Bulgaria (Brenitsa)
The second meeting, which took place in Brentisa/Bulgaria, had the heading “traditional and cultural toys”. For this purpose the partners and the participating students prepared a presentation about their own national traditional toys on their own. Here, for example, board games or traditional wooden toys were presented. It did not stop at the presentations, but the participants put into practice what they had experienced visually. Now students were to enjoy making the toys they had just learned about with their own hands. This was a wonderful opportunity to share the toy culture with the participating countries. Another overall goal was to repeat the experiences and toys learned in the follow-up with the home students and establish them in their own families. The appreciation for foreign cultures and toys thus gained an unsuspected level, which could be traced through questionnaires. The appreciation for foreign European cultures thus increased immediately and comparisons were made with one’s own domestic situation. Thus, the tolerance behavior towards supposedly “foreign people” in one’s own classroom also changed. This was realized, for example, through voluntary school sponsorships, tutoring for refugee children and mentoring for disadvantaged children.
In addition to manufacturing, the practice of community games also played an important role. Communication, which is one of the many pillars, was easily ensured through agreements in verbal and non-verbal communication.
3rd meeting in Romania (Rosiorii de Verdi)
The third meeting took place in Romania, which, by the way, was one of the most underestimated countries. This statement is based on students’ testimonies from various partner schools. The aim of this meeting was to
to bring traditional toys to life by using costumes and thus creating a transfusion that takes on a living form. This was done in a designated theater space on a stage where each country used its own prepared costumes. In various role-plays and plays, students and teachers, for example, brought fairy tale characters to life and acted out these scenarios either in their traditional form or in a modern transposed and invented scenario. These plays became the highlight of the Romanian meeting because the students brought their creativity to life. Heroes were brought to life. In the play, the students learned to practice, train and acquire various skills, knowledge and courses of action. During the follow-up, for example, the German school made a resulting short video, with a student in the role of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe retelling his life and the writer’s ups and downs. This received national recognition and was also featured in various newspapers. The cultural alienation that certainly prevailed in many minds beforehand was reduced, for example, by the Turkish game of “Nasreddin Hocas”. Here, many students realized where Turkish beliefs and ways of thinking originated. Thus, such games have nourished life in Turkey.
4th meeting in Portugal (Ponta do Sol)
The fourth meeting in Madeira (Portugal) was dedicated to the presentation of toys from the past. In this meeting only the teachers were present, but the local students from “Ponta do Sol” were actively involved. During the tour of the island, among other things, a toy museum was visited and a school for disadvantaged students. The interesting thing about this school was that the disadvantaged students made toys themselves. Here the teachers became aware of the effect of making their own toys. It really served as therapy for the students. In the presentations, the partner schools were to show which toys or games were played across generations. The focus was on 3 generations sitting at the same table or playing with the same toy and spending time together. For example, wooden toys from the time of the grandparents that were no longer used by the current generation were presented. These were then made together and played with together. It became clear here that there were great similarities between the cultures and that many games were even identical, even though there were thousands of kilometers between the countries. This again sharpened the understanding for a European community. In order to bring this closer to the students, the presentations and the performances of the intergenerational games were shown again later at school.
5th meeting in Latvia (Upesleju)
The fifth meeting took place from 01.03.2020 to 07.03.2020 (including travel time). Unfortunately, the Corona pandemic broke out this week also in Germany in the district of Heinsberg, where the Leonardo da Vinci Comprehensive School Hückelhoven is located, as the first hotspot. Therefore, the German partner school could not participate in this meeting. The participating partners reported that they completed various traditional outdoor games, as far as the pandemic and hygiene measures also allowed. The efforts demonstrated by the students led to the discovery of more playful processes by almost all participants. Afterwards, the participants reported the added value for learning, as they had more fun while learning and strengthened important social skills. They also received information about traditional games from other countries, with school administrators and teachers trying to implement what they learned in their institutions. For the students, the acquaintance with the new culture was an exciting experience, as it helped them to counteract cultural alienation and to understand how to overcome their doubts, especially in such a distant phase.
6th meeting in Germany (Hückelhoven)
The last meeting was at first under an unknown light, because nobody knew at that time if the pandemic will allow a real meeting. For this reason we pushed the date back again and again until the deadline of the project came closer and closer and made a real meeting impossible. So we decided to organize a virtual meeting and to realize the theme “Waldorf Games and Toys” in the best sense. During the 3 days the partners first enjoyed a broad overview of the origins, philosophy and practice of Waldorf schools and Waldorf education respectively. Highlights of the meeting included DIY videos of the partners demonstrating how to carry out Waldorf techniques using wooden toys as examples. Team Germany, for example, recorded a construction of an insect hotel with their students, highlighting the deeper meaning of craftsmanship. In addition to the numerous videos, there were also interaction games with the teachers to convey German culture in a humorous way. All in all, the virtual meeting was a very successful learning activity.

In our opinion, the project will have a particularly lasting benefit and promote lifelong learning because the students and teachers not only learned how to play games and interact together. In addition, all participants gained a deep insight into the creation of a game and analyzed it in its basic structures, as they had to either make or present games and toys themselves. This not only made games fun and removed the participants from today’s technology pandemic, but developed enormously important strategies for learning in itself. The sustainable growth of the project will be made possible by the enormously strong network of people, as social cohesion has already taken root during the difficult phase of the pandemic. The students and also the teachers understood to keep the project alive and to realize the goals despite adverse circumstances.

Project Website

https://dreamerleader.wixsite.com/erasmus/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 134071,9 Eur

Project Coordinator

Leonardo da Vinci Gesamtschule Hückelhoven & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Upesleju internatpamatskola-rehabilitacijas centrs
• Scoala Gimnaziala”Zaharia Stancu”
• Escola Básica e Secundária da Ponta do Sol
• NENE HATUN ILKOKULU
• Primary school “Hristo Botev” Brenitsa