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Reports of Workgroup 1: Regional Culture: Identity in the Past, Identity for the Future

Alexander Avenarius

Our project is a cooperation of medium-level schools from five different countries; the large number of participants makes it a challenge to find common grounds and to gear the various activities into a common direction. We believe that we have achieved this goal in the first academic year of our cooperation even though it was difficult. What will be interesting about the further progress of our cooperation will be how we will be able to implement our common goals in the future in an even more effective way: unfold the creativity of the participants without watering down the outlines of the project.

The project is designed for a period of three school years which is why the first year was largely dedicated to the exploration of the cultural identity of the individual regions with a focus on the past. (The outlook into the future of the united Europe will be an increasingly salient issue during the remainder of the project) For some of our schools the most recent cultural past seemed important to the project participants for the design of the cultural identity of their school region - other schools again preferred to look back to earlier centuries. At our presentation representatives from all participating schools using descriptive material will demonstrate the focus of the work of the respective school. Despite the common goals the range of activities was broad and varied from school to school - each school being inspired by the others.. Examples include: pupils analysing the history of local folk dances, not only passively, but also studying some folk dances themselves; pupils organised meetings with the older inhabitants of their quarters and learnt a lot about the pre-war history of their school region; all the schools together create one joint calendar for the year 2004 presenting the five cultural regions as part of a uniting Europe in images and text in cooperation with all five schools … Some activities will be documented at the presentation with the help of VHS video recordings (partly made by the pupils themselves).

During the second school year we plan to present the collected materials to a broader public, probably on a project website set up especially for the project. Modern communication technologies therefore are an important element of our project work; the presentation features demonstrations of the individual schools created specifically for the project. It also shows the type and manner of direct electronic communication amongst the pupils of the participating schools - the set-up of two discussion groups (in English and German) plus online-archives to register all pupils and teachers from the participating schools.

Daria Śmieja

Socrates school project is being realized in our school according to the plan made by all the parner schools. About 60 students take part in the realization of the project,and besides it has been included into the programme of some other subjects. Interdisciplinary path has been made, it means that every teacher realizes the project at his lessons.We should say that there is a complete coorelation of subjects' contents which are being realized.

According to the marked steps, firstly students have analised the regional literature, pieces of art and folc traditions which refer to the region of the Cieszyn Silesia. The life and the works of Zofia Kossak have been discussed with analysis of the fragments of her works such as "Unknown country" and "Polish Year". This material has been supported with the lesson in the Zofia Kossak Museum in Górki Wielkie which was given by Joanna Jurgała Jureczka and titled "Zofia Kossak and her connestion with the Cieszyn Silesia". At the same time students translated the biography of the poet and writer into English.

Besides, students took part in the photo exibition of our local artist Jadwigi Zipser and as a result they expressed their impressions and feelings writing essays, literary works with graphical inscriptions. At geography lessons the students made the reports concerning geographical environment and economy of Cieszyn Silesia. As a result of their work a map of the region has been created.

History lessons were devoted to the historical background of Skoczów, archeology of the town and its neighbourhood. We must take into consideration that students are working on the map of Skoczów fortress. Texts concerning lessons of geography, history and characteristic features of our region in details have been translated in English and German language. One of the points of our project was to enable the students to meet with the local artists and experts. Our pupils had the possibility to get to know the literary works of our local poets, Urszula Korzonek and Maria Burek, and the chance to chat with the artists about our rich folc and regional culture at the meeting organized at school.

All these activities have not been of such great value if not the permanent contact and exchange of the mentioned contents with partner schools. During the workshop in Bratislava we discussed the ways of project realization in every school as well as the ways of exchanging information. All schools settled upon an idea of creating a website, which would allow every school involved in the project to monitor the progress. What is more, it was decided that every school would create a questionnaire about the region, which will then be sent to all participating schools.

All the above agreements were already achieved. Our school has already created a website devoted to the project, which is regularly updated with the current news from our school: www.zso-skoczow.ata.com.pl

Because our main goal is to develop language abilities of our students and exchange the information about the regions therefore our students' e-mail addresses were exchanged among all participating schools. Internet is not only a tool for monitoring of the process but also a convenient way of communication for teachers and students.

Students exchange the information about their regions as well as gather all the necessary information needed to complete the questionnaires. In this way students are aware of their responsibility for the progress and realization of the project.

Furthermore, among the activities stimulating our students we organized a literary contest "Moja Mala Ojczyzna" and an art competition titled "Moja Miejscowosc". Students have also prepared Family Trees. All these activities have met with a great response in our school. All the achievements on the project are published on our web site and also in a form of reports analyzed at school and sent over to all partner schools.

The achievements on the project also meet with a great response in our local community. We have published articles in local press (Gazeta Skoczowska and Glos Ziemi Cieszynskiej) four times. There was also an announcement in a local radio station.

From 31st March to 3rd April we welcomed partner schools in our school in Skoczów.

The visit was full of different events :

  • we worked with all the teachers on our project,
  • we discussed the creation of the common calendar for 2004 year,
  • the students' exchange and
  • the further exchange of the information by the Internet and
  • the creation of the common website.

We all were also welcomed at the Town Hall by the governor of Skoczów . Our students have also prepared the rich artistic programme and then we showed our guest our region. Both the students and the teachers were satisfied with the organization and we are waiting for the next visits which will take place in Ostrava and Klagenfurt.

Siegmund Kastner

Our common topic has the title: Regional Culture; Identity in the Past, Identity in the Future. Whereas at the first meeting we focused on getting to know each other and on identifying topics, at our second meeting, in particular, we analysed the type of communication and the use of the electronic media.

Answering the individual questionnaires pupils had established on the individual countries required a vivid exchange. The activities of the individual schools mainly referred to the literary and music traditions of the individual regions. Activities include assembling ballades and recording the music traditions as well as the literature of the individual regions. Plans exist to issue and discuss various brochures.

Activities through the past months, however, focused on the production of the first calendar assembling the candidate countries. In each country the idea is to transfer the production of several months and then together produce a European calendar. Several school classes participate and interdisciplinary education includes art.

Here the manifold communication paths and communication strategies have proved a success. Plans exist to introduce a trial sample at Schlaining. If we manage to find the sponsors nothing stands in the way of a higher number of copies. The next meeting will take place in Ostrava and then the schools from the accession countries will come to Carinthia.

PS.: Minutes of the intense work carried out in Bratislava (Slovak Republic) and in Skoczow (Poland) are already available. The following countries are members of our working group: the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Austria. The sv. Vincente de Paul grammar school is in charge of the organisation.

Vilma Bajko

The participants of the project found a common theme during the Vienna meeting in February 2002. After having handed in the applications and having them accepted by all the Socrates National Agencies, the work started at the beginning of the 2002/2003 school year.

During the first period the task of our school and that of the partner schools was to get to know each other's region better and to examine the cultural heritage of our own region in more detail.

In the first term after the Bratislava project meeting in October 2002 the students set up a questionnaire consisting of 50 questions about all the 5 regions (each school contributing with 10 questions about their own regions). The participating schools have exchanged e-mail addresses and the students had to find the answers through their Internet correspondence. We have also made up a permanent Comenius 1 exhibition at our school and a temporary one at school celebrations about the participating regions.

There were several local TV-interviews and articles in the local newspaper informing the local inhabitants about our international project.

At the same meeting the participants decided to publish a Calendar for the year 2004. The work on the calendar pages and on the short articles in English and German also started.

At about the beginning of the second term we set up a web page about our school. There is a section about the Socrates / Comenius 1 Project informing those who are interested in our programme. The summary is in Hungarian now but we're going to extend it with photos and attach an English and a German version as well.

The students also started collecting the literary material of the project: pieces of folk literature in our region (legends, ballads, folk tales). By the end of this term some hundred pages have been collected and the material is ready for selection.

By the time of the Skoczów project meeting (in April 2003) and during the weeks after the students completed their task by creating artistic calendar pages using montage techniques and writing short informational texts about their school and their town in English and in German.

During the second term we visited several local places of cultural interest and both the students and the teachers had the opportunity to get to know the historical past of their town much better. With groups of students we visited the town castle and the scene of the latest acheological excavations, the regional peasant house, and took part in lessons and lectures on local history in the town library. Following the visits the students gave an account on their latest experiences and reflected on how these visits and lessons extended their knowledge abot regional past and cultural heritage.

At the moment we are in the middle of selecting the material and translating the content into English and German. In the next school year all the five regions will get acquainted with the material collected by the others, and they will take part in a competition to illustrate the literary works of art before the final selection and common edition in a book, on a web site on CD, etc.

For the Ostrava project meeting the students are preparing to give an account of the survey (50 questions about the 5 regions) and to give a short presentation on the culture of their country (both in English and German).