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PROJECT SUMMARY PROJECT SUMMARY

Since August 2018 when Corlaer College (Nijkerk, the Netherlands) got in touch with IES Conde de Orgaz (Madrid, Spain), our two secondary schools have been collaborating. Our teachers have visited each other’s schools and in the school year 2018-2019 we started a couple of eTwinning projects. The purpose of the first one was to promote the use of English and Spanish amongst our students, and the second was an interdisciplinary project in which the students in the Netherlands prepared visual material and the students in Spain wrote a story about the images provided by their Dutch partners. As planned, this school year 2019-2020, we started an exchange. Nineteen Dutch students visited Madrid for a week in October and nineteen Spanish students stayed for a week in March in Nijkerk. This year, as well, IES Conde de Orgaz started an exchange with IIS Giordano Bruno (Brudio, Italy). Eighteen Spanish students visited Bologna in November and we were expecting nineteen students at the end of March, but unfortunately the trip had to be cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak.

We are so pleased with our partnership that we hope to consolidate it aided by this Erasmus+ project. With this project we not only expect that our students learn about our countries and common values but also we ask them to go back in time and leap into the 20th century. We have chosen the 20th century because it is a period covered in the syllabus of our 16-17 year-old students in various subjects, such as English, History, Literature, Arts, etc. We will ask our students to explain to their overseas visitors what it was like living at that time in their country.

They will do so assisted by their teachers who will help them before their partners arrive to discover the 20th century Spain, Italy or the Netherlands, focusing on four aspects: Art, History, Literature and Technology. Our project is called “Coming to terms with the 20th century” because we want our students to reflect on what we owe to and what we reject from the previous century. We propose that our students learn about their pasts by discovering the similarities and the differences these three European communities have experienced.

We have established three different objectives that our Erasmus+ project will allow us to achieve. First, to raise awareness among our students of their European heritage, not only of a foreign country but also of their own country. Secondly, to promote internationalisation amongst our students and our three secondary schools. Finally, our students acquire a meaningful knowledge of history, art and literature. To implement the Erasmus+ project in each secondary school we have formed an interdepartmental team of teachers from the Arts, History, English, Dutch, Italian and Spanish Departments, each with a coordinator. These teams have developed the project and in due course will select sixteen students and two teachers to travel either to Spain, Italy or the Netherlands. In each country the students will join a guided tour of the city centre, visit a museum, the house of a renowned artist, a technological innovation and will visit a city celebrated for its architecture. All these activities will allow the students to complete an assignment in which they compare and contrast the 20th century in Spain, Italy and the Netherlands.

We have designed this Erasmus+ project so that it involves the participation of the whole educational community of the three secondary schools and not only the students who will travel abroad. The incoming students will participate in activities in each of the secondary schools during the week of their visit. This will allow other students, and not just those participating in the mobility, to appreciate the benefits of communicating in English with other teenagers. The presentations given by the visitors will give the host students (and not only those directly partaking in the exchange) the chance to learn about the culture of another European country. As well as the teachers (who will organize the activities that will take place in each secondary school) and the students (who will participate in these activities), we require above all the participation of the families. Without their contribution, the hosts of the visiting students, this project would be inconceivable.

Participating in this project will allow three educational institutions in three European countries to build a closer partnership. We desire that this becomes a long-term working relationship and that this Erasmus+ project is merely the beginning of an enduring collaboration. This process of greater internationalization between our secondary schools will greatly benefit our students and will meet one of the requests that parents demand nowadays. But above all, our aspiration is that our students become more aware of the immense cultural heritage that European countries both share and treasure.