Az ACES projekt értékelése Diversity and Human Rights ACES project Sokszínűség és Emberjog ACES projekt

Az ACES projekt értékelése
Diversity and Human Rights ACES project
Sokszínűség és Emberjog ACES projekt

Program tartalma:
1. Szakmai, módszertani látogatás Bukarestben, Szófiában, Budapesten
2. Újszerű, interkulturális tartalmú módszertani elemek alkalmazása tanórán (etika).

Az Ady Endre Gimnázium partnerei:
I. ”Pencho Slaveikov” Comprehensive School №1 – Bulgaria, Szófia (Lorita Zaharieva)
II. National College “Octav Onicescu”- Románia, Bukarest (Nicolau Tania)

Programelemek:
1. ACES Kick-Off Meeting - Salzburg 2009. szept. 28-okt. 2. (Sallai Zoltán- Boros Viktória 12. d)
2. Szófia - partnertalálkozó – 2009. okt. 29-november 1 (Sallai Zoltán)
3. Bukarest - partnertalálkozó – 2009. december 3-5. (Sallai Z. + G. Petra, B. Viktória 11. d)
4. Budapest - partnertatálkozó – 2010. jan. 26-29.
5. ACES Academy projektzárás – Szlovákia, 2010. március 23-26. (Sallai Zoltán –Boros Viktória 11. d)

FINAL REPORT

Content/Main issues: The project aimеd to promote a better understanding and integration of minorities through appreciating the diverse needs, cultures and values of both minority and majority communities. The concept of minorities included disabled, ethnic minorities, gender and sexual minorities.The partners discussed, developed and tested materials, methods and strategies to make learning more attractive and to integrate minority groups, involving also their families where appropriate.

Main activities

1. September: Theme Introduction, initial evaluation; Information about the partner schools; collection of material.

The main topic of the month for discussion: School and Cultural diversity.

2. October: Research and video conferencing about sexual orientation with aces partners and representatives from organizations; Preparation of a questionnaire about diversity and stereotypes; the four island game. The Meeting in Bulgaria: The main activities were the questionnaire about diversity and stereotypes, planning for the website, interactive games and lessons, the Halloween Party, the school concert in the city concert hall. The main topic of the month: Sexual orientation.

3. November: lessons, discussions and games about the chosen issues, including causes and solutions, art work and work on the diversity calendar and website, preparation for the project meeting. The main topic of the month for discussion: Ethnic diversity.

4. December: The Meeting in Bucharest: mid evaluation and celebrating differences; aces students presented the school newspaper and the project work. There were some presentations about the partner countries and winter religious traditions; social and energizing games; custom and food presentations by students and parents, belonging to the ethnic minorities; ethnic folk dances and songs; art exhibition; work on the project website www.human-rights.uv.ro , and preparation for the next phase of the project and meeting. Interviews with students and parents from different ethnic groups, partners in the project and guests from organizations. There were presentations of the traditions also at the partner schools. The main topic of the month was religious diversity.

5. January: The meeting in Budapest: Presentation of the project work and the school; forum theater and games about knowing and accepting diversity; city game " Find the diversity on the face of Budapest"; questionnaire development about diversity and stereotypes and interviews in the street; school exhibition; discussions about gender diversity and visiting a museum to search for the destiny of women in the exposition; evaluation of the results and planning the next steps. Work on the website and the blogs.The main topic of the month: gender

6. February: school visits and activities with children with disabilities; essay writing, art work and exhibitions at school; a meeting with disabled students at the partner schools; a school visit from ACES organization and presentation of the project work, further work on the website and the blogs. The focus was on disabilities.

7. March: Discussions about the children rights and drawing the rights; a visit at the school for children, essay writing about the woman who inspired us, art work and exhibitions; Presentation of the project work to the regional inspectorate and a delegation of international students and teachers, guests of the Bulgarian school on the 15 March; work on the website and the blogs. The month focus was on human diversity and the children rights.

Achievements / Outcomes: Better understanding and accepting diversity. We developed friendship across borders and became acquainted with varying perspectives and different ways of thinking. We helped students to foster cross-cultural communication and empowered young people as agents for positive change.

A Project website and two blogs: www.human-rights.uv.ro ; a diversity calendar; transnational competitions – video/art/photo and joint exhibitions; power point presentations; photo album; language bank (containing common terms across many languages); Teaching materials bank with website links; a film record of the meetings and reports from partners on dealing with minority questions, and discussion forum on best practices.

Personal Experiences, Challenges and Development

The most important thing is that we all learned a lot about social diversity and the importance to know more about people and their culture and traditions; to be tolerant and to accept the difference in society, to overcome prejudice and stereotypes.

Students: All students enjoyed the icebreaking games, the energisers and the social games. They worked in pairs and teams and drew pictures, made posters, took pictures and made PowerPoint presentations, wrote articles and essays and improved their language skills, their ICT skills, they learned to be more responsible and respect the deadlines. They improved also their social skills. Students learned to respect the other opinion; to be more tolerant with people from different backgrounds and with disabilities.

Teachers: They tried a lot of new methods and some of them were very successful in the classroom. They also learned a lot about the topic. The workshops were very well organised and they learned from each other. They liked the activities, improved ICT skills, made friends, worked in teams and improved the management skills.

Our meetings were very well planned and our students and teachers were motivated to participate. Most of the activities were in the afternoon or at the weekend, when they don’t have lessons but it was not a problem for the participants. They all were so excited to come and participate and spend time together with partners. At a parent meeting some parents said that their children talked all the time about the project meeting and the aces participants. They wanted to tell them more about the people in this country, to show the city and spend time together. The advantages of going on an exchange rather than to a hotel for students were immeasurable. Not only did they get a much greater exposure to the language, but they also got firsthand experience of the way the local people live: their homes, family life and food. They enjoyed the wonderful trip and meeting with the comforts of home. They also made friends for life. It was the best experience for all students. Our students were also very enthusiastic to visit some orphanages and schools for disabled children. They spent some hours together, drawing or just talking and made friends with the little children and didn’t want to go home, and now keep asking when we will go again there. We all enjoyed celebrating differences no matter what the activities were – presentations, folk dancing, drawing, games or discussions.

Both students and teachers were involved in all stages of project work.

When preparing the project and the project meetings we jointly set up the following principles that were crucial with regard to the events: they should be informative and interactive; they should make participation visible and enable reflection on the different roles we have or might have; they should foster team building and they should be fun. Thus, a big variety of working methods was used – such as lesson observation, presentations, quizzes, group work, outdoor activities and workshops. The composition of groups changed in the different working sessions: mixed groups of students and teachers, country teams, groups according to personal interests. The settings allowed a creative and dialogue-oriented interaction and a fruitful exchange between the participants. Further, it encouraged self-directed learning processes. The common working language was English. We had a Pleasure & Leisure Team: As the group of participants comprise people with different interests and needs, this team offered various activities during the free time and in the evenings, including Halloween party, sightseeing, shopping, theatre, games, and much more. The aim was to make it even easier for the students to get to know their peers, to interact and to feel “at home”. Every partner school organized a project meeting at their school and together with students and teachers from the other partner countries prepared the activities and the programme. The coordinating teachers were all the time engaged with the activities too and had the responsibility to prepare the information for the website and correspondence between partners and ACES organization.

The cooperation with our partners was successful because we had similar ideas on the topic, respected the different opinion and managed to plan and organise activities, which motivated students, teachers and parents to participate in.

Students and teachers had an intercultural experience because they had the opportunity to meet people from different counties and cultures, to learn about different ethnic groups and their way of life and traditions, to learn more about human diversity.

Working together was challenging because we had so many ideas and so little time and sometimes it was impossible to involve all the people who wanted to participate, especially those who didn’t speak very well in English.

We overcame the challenges we encountered by involving in the project meeting some of the students who didn’t talk much English but were interested in participating and enjoyed the activities, especially the social games and energisers.

INVOLVMENTS:

Classes/Students: Working in the project was a fun way to learn about the project topic and improve their skills. The pupils found it exciting to work with students from abroad; it was easy to get in touch with each other quickly.The project created a special relationship between pupils, parents and teachers.

Schools (school community, leadership): It was an advantage for the schools to participate in the project because more people will have the opportunity to know about their work, their achievements and the people, who work there, the European dimension is very important. More people will learn how much the diversity matters.

Local community and the broader public (parents, town, public relations work): We had the opportunity to involve our parents and some organisations in some of the activities of our project. We are proud of our results, because the people we met were concerned and supported us.

Other (additional partners, institutions): The teachers and students from the local school and the organisations working with ethnic groups, which were involved in some of the activities didn’t know much about this kind of projects. They were interested in our activities and participated in the meeting which we organised locally.

Evaluation

There were discussions, interviews and written reports.The evaluation during the project work covered the criteria of relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and impact and sustainability. We wanted the objectives of the project to be consistent with the Schools’ goals and strategies, country needs and global priorities. We wanted to know and show how inputs are converted to results. The effectiveness and importance of the activities were also on focus. At the design stage, the purpose was normally to identify the lowest cost alternative that would achieve specified objectives. At the monitoring and evaluation stage, the purpose was to analyze what outcomes have been achieved, at what cost. We asked the students and teachers about the impact, the positive and negative and long term effects. We were interested in the project continuation of benefits from the activities after the end of the project.

Teachers opinion

We are happy with the achievements and enjoyed working together. We are proud of the enthusiasm of our students, who were involved in the activities and the results of the project meetings. We participated, we learned a lot and we enjoyed doing all the activities. If we had had more time and money we would have involved more people and would have more products. We think that the project was very well planned, but in future we could add more activities with other institutions, which work with the minorities and are responsible for their education.

It was an exciting journey and we established a meaningful and sustainable intercultural dialogue with our partners. We encouraged young people to develop intercultural understanding through the integration of intercultural education into the school activities and fostered a strong contribution to peace, mutual respect, tolerance and solidarity for the 21 century. Everything that we do and are has been influenced by the cultures. What our future looks like will depend, to a great extend, on how different cultures live and deal with one another. After all, we are all part of one world- a world for which we are jointly responsible. If we are to preserve our identities and traditions, respecting the customs and lifestyle of others in a climate of mutual respect and appreciation, intercultural dialogue has to become an integral part of our education and project work is the best opportunity to do it.

Students opinion:

My name is Nikoleta .We have been working on a project about diversity with students and teachers from Romania and Hungary. It was great fun to meet them at our school and participate in the activities together. At the beginning we were all shy and didn’t talk much but when we started to play games on Friday and Saturday I think everybody started to feel better and enjoyed playing. I liked the game with the feelings, because we could understand how the others feel. There were some more games which I liked too, especially the one where we express the diversity with our body in 3 pictures. We have to do more projects like this one with schools and learn more about the culture and different way of thinking

My name is Daina. I enjoyed a lot .I liked the activities and improved my English. I liked the games, we learn easier through games. They make us happy and we are more motivated to participate. The webpage and blogs are good. It will be cool if we wrote songs and put them there. We like creativity and there were a lot of opportunities in the project to participate and use our imagination.

My name is Gergana. I think the project is very interesting and the idea is nice. I enjoyed it a lot.

VIDEOS:

WEB meeting from Bucharest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azo06rXAMmc&feature=player_embedded

Interwiew in Bukarest part I-II:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weu4bGSEWIU&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNv9ZISgK1M&feature=player_embedded

Intercultural program in Bukarest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMP5nk3tbkE&feature=player_embedded

In Bucharest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SGUxPFXuVs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuuEC0jqMq0

Romanian WEB page: http://www.aces-diversity.uv.ro

Lorita’s BLOG: http://www.blogger.com/profile/16282813254514218970