General secondary school “Vasil Levski” Dolni chiflik - Bulgaria

The General secondary school “Vasil Levski” is a school with 132 year old history. It is the follower of the first school in Dolni Chiflik, which is founded 1884/1885. The school which has well kept the traditions of the past and which are beeing developed untill today and the present future

 School “Vasil Levski” is the biggest school in Dolni Chiflik. Here 756 students are studying from 6 to 19 year old and beeing separated on 33 classes. The school has very well developed material technician base from 3 separated rooms with one of which has its own interactive board. We have sports hall where we play volleyball, handball, football and basketball. The school has restaurant for students only and school library.

The pedagogic collective is consisted by 63 members led by school director Mrs. Maria Hristova and three deputy directors. In help of the school is help school board which unites the parent society.

The board of school, teachers, students and parents are working together for developing different projects with purpose to make the school attractive for young people. There are made many different class and out class forms which purpose is to meet the interests of students and their abilities. To the school is functioning child dance folklore staff called Chiflikchiiche.

School “Vasil Levski” in Dolni Chliflik works on international projects : project „With care for every student“, project „Support for even access in personal developing“, project : „Warm lunch“ – with the support of Bulgarian Red Cross, project : „Becoming a multicultural European”„ on program Erazum + and many e Twinning projects. The school is awarded with eTwining european sign for quality work by the project „Be multucultural!“, with certificate for high achievements on project „2014“ , with many national eTwining labels for quality.

Liceul Teoretic „Nichita Stănescu”, București - România

Liceul Teoretic ”Nichita Stănescu” is situated in Titan area of  Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Our highschool is specialised in social sciences, mathematics and ICT with full-time courses. Some important subjects areas in line with the special focus are sociology, religion and history. The school also offers subjects like Romanian language and literature, foreign languages (English, French), history, geography, biology, chemistry, physics, maths, religious education, psychology, economics, sport, music, visual education, etc.

The problem of migration is a topic of interest in the current debates because of economic effects among countries that receive immigrants.  In Europe , the agreement of free movement within the European Union paves the way for labor migration across national borders. Our students  often heard about the problems which families who migrate to work in other countries have.Usually  grandparents take care  of the children of these families. Working on this project, our students would have the opportunity to study real life related to multicultural issues and migration.

Students from our school valued multiculturalism and diversity in the classroom. An overwhelming majority responded that diversity had a profoundly positive impact upon their learning process and their perceptions of other cultures. 

Our students are extremely pleased with the beginning of this new project, ”Becoming a multicultural European”, because they will work in international teams and will use various web tools. New challenges, new stories, new adventures and new friends are awaiting our students . Let's start!

Official start of KA2-project

We're back on this blog! Hooray! We have enjoyed working on the topic of diversity to much that we have applied for EU funds for a KA2-project for some time. This year we were lucky and received funds to work on the project. We are so happy! Now, who is we?

It's three schools who have been working on all the eTwinning-projects we did:  

• Liceul Teoretic Nichita Stanescu, Bukarest, Romania
• General secondary school Vasil Levski, Dolni chiflik, Bulgaria
• Kaufmannsschule II, Hagen, Germany.

This is the official description of the project running till 30 November 2018:

The project combines virtual learning and communication with personal experience at transnational project meetings. The three applying schools have a wealth of experience in international projects using the eTwinning platform. Staff and pupils at the schools meet people of different cultural and religious backgrounds both at school and in their freetime. There has been migration between the three countries of Bulgaria, Germany and Romania and recently the debate about migration from Romanians and Bulgarians to Germany has triggered many stereotypes. We believe that misconceptions about other nations and cultures can only be overcome by communication and interaction. Thus the project focuses on virtual communication and interaction as well as transnational project meetings. 

One of the objectives is to find ways of encouraging students to meet of different cultures and to overcome common prejudices though working on the same project and doing assignments in international group work. At the same time this will be supported by face-to-face meetings which cannot completely be replaced by virtual interaction. The consortium will survey students on the conception of other nations before the project, during international group work and after transnational project meetings to find out if communication, interaction and personal meetings have an influence on their opinions.

The project will start with a meeting at the coordinating school in Hagen which will focus on organisational issues and train staff to carry out the project efficiently (e.g. intercultural training, successful blogging, using eTwinning, scientific input on migration). Pupils will be involved in order to work as multipliers for the project at each school. The teachers will be members of the project team and the pupils will be chosen among those interested. 

The next project step will be the investigation of migration involving the three countries, approaches will include historical research, interpretation of statistics and interviewing people with a migrational background. Students will learn how to present their findings in a virtual classroom. These acitvities will lead to the project meeting in Romania at which the ebook "History of Migration: The cases of Bulgaria, Romania and Germany" will be presented to the public.

The next project step looks at the current situation and students' feelings towards each other (results from the surveys) and focuses on multicultural concepts and issues. The focus is on the development of a strategy of managing multiculturality at all schools - staff and students defining general needs and special content for each school. These strategies will be presented at the transnational project meeting in Bulgaria which will also identify steps for implementing those strategies.

The last project step is devoted to religion as the political situation at the moment calls for interreligious dialogue in order to make students strong against extremist views. We believe that if you know facts and believers you are less likely to develop hostile attitudes against a different religion. This leads to the last project meeting in Hagen in the Ruhr area which is a melting pot regarding religions. We also want to look at the role the EU plays in the area of multicultural policies and plan to visit Brussels to get first-hand experience.

Last but not least we hope to influence our students and staff to be open-minded concerning multicultural settings and enable students to work in international environments using ICT.