Memories and histories joined – our ancestors’ testimonies of the past versus our present
28. januar 2018
Dear Colleagues,
We, Agnieszka and Ewa, are teachers in one of the II Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. R. Traugutta (secondary school) in Częstochowa, Poland. Our school is a member of UNESCO Associated Schools Network. This year we would like to join the Erasmus+ Programme and we have prepared a project entitled ‘Memories and histories joined – our ancestors’ testimonies of the past versus our present’ (the details of the project are below) and we are looking for partner schools among the Programme European countries. The number of partners is restricted to 6 different schools from at least two different countries. If you are interested in cooperation with our school, please contact us till 1st March 2018 at e-mail: agnieszka.bednarek@traugutt.net.
Memories and histories joined – our ancestors’ testimonies of the past versus our present
Our project is based on European heritage rooted in a difficult history of European countries: those at war and those suffering totalitarian communism – like Poland. It is planned to start on 01.09.2018 and finish on 31.08.2020 (24 months).
Our students are going to look for the balance between today’s spirit of freedom and the elders’ experience on the basis of their ancestors’ (our students’ grandparents as well as older generations e.g. retired teachers, relatives, neighbours, friends…) memories and immediate testimonies. Not only will we be learning history through our elder relatives’ stories but we will also learn to respect all other people around us, we will deepen our empathy and gain the ability to put ourselves in other people’s position. We do hope that due to all the above young people will be able to recognise and avoid all the threats they have to face today such as: identity crisis, lack of respect towards others and violence.
The target groups of the project are to be the seniors – retired teachers, grandparents and other members of the students’ families (at the age of 60+) as well as students of secondary schools (15-20 years old) and the teachers of the partner schools.
In order to realise the project students, teachers and all engaged people from the partner countries are going to undertake various activities: creating a website and a chat room for the participants, interviewing grandparents or other older people, creating audio files with interviews, preparing visual and photographical documents, organising exhibitions in participating schools and debates with members of educational communities. The final product of our project will be a CD containing interviews with the seniors, a photo album with pictures taken during the works on the project, a three-language dictionary including vocabulary connected with our topic, handmade artefacts co-created with the older generation and galleries of portraits of the old and young age.
Apart from the products of intellectual work we are also expecting non-material results such as: learning the culture of our partner countries, developing the participants’ language skills and the ability of working in a team, emphasising the role of cooperation between generations, studying new cultures, acquiring new competences by the teaching staff, meeting with new experience, learning new teaching methods and techniques, developing teachers’ language skills, learning the ability of using the experience in other projects, sharing the knowledge acquired in the project with other teachers and the community.
With best regards,
Agnieszka Bednarek
Ewa Ludwin
II Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. R. Traugutta
ul. Kilińskiego 62
42-200 Częstochowa
Poland