interview

Interview for Radio “Fokus” with Stanislava Petrova – “Vasil Levski” school project coordinator and pedagogical adviser in Secondary school “Vasil Levski” – Dolni chiflik

E: Mrs. Petrova, the school in Dolni chiflik is working on a very interesting project from Erasmus+ programme. Would you tell us more about the activities?

St. Petrova: The project is named “Becoming a multicultural European”. It happens on programme “Erasmus+” – Lifelong learning. It started on 1st October 2016, and duration is 2 years. The steps of implementation of the project were laborious.

All started in 2013, when me, together with a group of students decided to work in platform eTwinning of a project named “Be multicultural!” There we had partnerships with many other schools from Europe; we shared a lot of information in TwinSpace (shared space of the project). Students had chances to share opinions, to present their vision in presentations, drawings, texts, essays, ect. As we realized that working teachers on the project and high school students are deeply interested in that, we decided to convert this virtual cooperation into real one.

The eye contact appeared to be very useful in the process of work and so we laid the first steps to change the eTwinning into another project “Sharing_Compearing=Caring”. There teachers and students had chances to share once more. So in August 2016 the coordinator of the present project announced that “Erasmus+” project was approved by the German National Agency and it will be implemented.

Students from Secondary school “Vasil Levski” took part in a transnational meeting in Hagen, Germany within “Becoming a multicultural European”. Actually in this project three schools from three countries take part – Germany, Romania and Bulgaria. The main arm is the work with students who meet and communicate and share ideas together, The meeting took place between 20^th – 25^th on November 2016. There students showed that they could break stereotypes. It`s known that each nation has its stereotypes; this project allows us to change them, especially negative ones.

During our first meeting in Hagen, four teachers and three students from Bulgaria took part in the event. Our representatives managed to acquaint with German Educational System, to distinguish the differences and propinquity of Bulgarian and German standards in Education. Our students had opportunities to visit lessons and to observe what happens in a German school. They also communicated with students from the other countries involved in the project. There were also lectures, trainings, other activities, a lot of ideas of planning project activities were shared.

That is the third project of this programme “Lifelong learning” for our school. I said the third because between 2012-2014 we worked on “MaMBo” project, programme “Comenius”. Then in 2016 we successfully completed a project of ecological topic named “Save the earth – to be here tomorrow!”. I think that the school team – presented by school management, teachers, parents definitely became aware how useful these projects are. Their activities reflect positively on the whole school life and emphasize the importance of whole life learning, which is the motto of Erasmus+.

It is planned publishing of ebook of history and migration among Bulgaria, Romania and Germany. Also each school-partner of the project – is supposed to create a strategy for managing of diversity considering, specificity of each educational system of the countries. A multireligions dialogue will be provided – possibility for visits of churches, mosques, synagogues – the three main religions. Students must be acquainted with the basis of each religion. The aim is to compare the religions and to realize the similarities and differences between them. The project is very interesting for us, the theachers too, as a professional experience and methodological perspective. Our children come back full of emotions by what they saw and their participation.