GERMANY

1st MOVILITY: 9-15th DECEMBER, ROSTOCK
GERMANY

Time	Where	Content	Justification
December 2018	Germany	Getting to know about the subject of character education (e.g.11 principles of effective character education) Having workshops and seminars on character education How is character education implemented in other schools? What can be adopted? How can students test their character? + Planing of essential aspects of the project (manual, blog, travelling with students, budget etc.)	Through evaluation, the impact of character education can be seen through changes in school climate. For example, many character education schools are reporting §  reduced violence §  fewer discipline referrals §  less vandalism §  improved attendance §  higher academic performance A district or school will likely struggle to assess its program, but educators and administrators agree it is worth the effort. More assessment tools are needed, but some existing tools include school surveys, behavioral observations and statistics, and self-assessment questionnaires.

Monday 10th December

OPENING CEREMONY

The opening ceremony took place on Monday, 10 December, at Gymnasium Sanitz, Rostock (Germany). The coordinating country organised the ceremony at their school, where the mayor of the city and the director gave some presents to the participating schools.

Christian Sokolowski, the coordinator of the project, explained the main concepts of our project and two students sang songs related to the topic, together with another student who played the piano. 

Here are some pictures of the event:

Christian Sokolowski, coordinating country

Spanish team

Icelandic team

Portuguese team

"People help the people", Birdy

Getting to know the school:

After the opening ceremony, the visiting teachers joined the German teachers and got to know each other, explored the school facilities and had a break to get in contact.

After the break, all the teachers joined the students and took part in both an English and Yoga lesson.

The teachers were asked about their daily routines in their countries and had the opportunity to get to know the students and their Christmas traditions, too. Finally, they sang Christmas carols from their countries together with the students.

Here are some pictures of the day:

Gymnasium Sanitz

Tuesday, 11 December

On Tuesday all the teachers met at Sportforum Hotel, where they had a conference room available to work on the project. The German teachers organised seminars and workshops that took place throughout the day, and they discussed topics related to the project, such as How to define one´s character, How to test it and questions related to the planing and organisation.

Seminar 1:

-Overview and questions acoording to the project-aims.

-Around the project: Blog, video, Communication, Mobility Tool.

-Other aspects to clarify.

Wednesday, 12th December

On Wednesday the teachers continued discussing the guidelines of the project:

Seminar 2:

-How do we want to start? What´s important? The good teacher? What does Kristján Kristjánson recommend?

-Definition of character-testing/different ways.

-Philosofical background of Character Education and the framework. What´s our approach? 

                                                                                                                                                               The local newspaper came to the conference room to ask the coordinating teachers some questions related to the project. This is the link to what they published some days later:

http://www.ostsee-zeitung.de/Mecklenburg/Rostock/Leidenschaft-statt-Leistungsdruck-Schule-soll-soziale-Werte-vermitteln


Thursday, 13th December

Seminar 3: 

-Virtues Groupwork: Which character traits do we want to work on?
-eTwinning projects
-What could we do at school? Projects in between the meetings? Literary project.

Friday, 14th December

Seminar 4:

-Planing and scheduling the first year.
-How to elect students for the trips to Portugal, Spain and Germany.

January - May

In the last months we implemented the topic Character Education in our classes: We talked about things that are important to lead a good life and discussed the significance of being good.

What does it mean to be a good person? We realized that every person has certain virtues & vices which make us unique. Before learning more about our character and to be able to talk about our strengths and weaknesses we introduced the topic with a matching exercises. It seemed so easy at the beginning ;-)

We did two character tests on the websites www.viacharacter.com & www.16personalities.com. After that the students posted their feelings on a padlet in the eTwinning Twinspace.

Our first two virtues we chose to work on are gratitude and compassion. In Germany the students kept a gratitude journal and summarized the content on a padlet. It was interesting to see that students from Iceland, Spain and Portugal are grateful for the same things. Some students also turned their gratitude journals into word art.