5 European Quality Labels

This is the list of the 1131 schools awarded the European Quality Label in 2013.

http://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/news/news/schools_awarded_the_european_l.htm

Congratulations for our own European Quality Labels:

For Germany

for Spain

for Greece

for Cyprus

for Italy (Nettuno)

The Greek school received the following text with its european quality label on October 29th. Also similar texts have been sent by the eTwinning Team to the schools in Spain and Germany:

"Αγαπητή/έ Katerina FYSSAKI, Συγχαρητήρια! Το σχολείο σας βραβεύθηκε με την Ευρωπαϊκή Ετικέτα Ποιότητας για την τελειότητα της εργασίας σας στο έργο eTwinning "Human Rights in Europe between Ideal and Reality - Rights and Challenge for Students in the 21st Century by means of Poetry, Arts and Music". Αυτό σημαίνει πως η εργασία σας, η εργασία των μαθητών και του σχολείου σας έχει αναγνωριστεί στο υψηλότερο Ευρωπαϊκό επίπεδο. Σαν αποτέλεσμα, θα λάβετε ένα πιστοποιητικό το οποίο μπορείτε να επισυνάψετε στην ιστοσελίδα σας και να το εκθέσετε σε μία περίοπτη θέση στο σχολείο σας. Επίσης, το έργο σας θα εμφανιστεί σε έναν ειδικό χώρο της Ευρωπαϊκής Διαδικτυακής Πύλης στο www.etwinning.net. Για μία ακόμη φορά, συγχαρητήρια για αυτό το μοναδικό επίτευγμα και ελπίζω να συναντηθούμε σε κάποια από τις εκδηλώσεις eTwinning κατά τη διάρκεια του έτους. 

Με τους καλύτερους χαιρετισμούς μου 

eTwinning Team

...................in english:

Dear Ms.......................,

Congratulations! Your school was awarded the European Quality Label for the perfection of your work in the project eTwinning "Human Rights in Europe between Ideal and Reality - Rights and Challenge for Students in the 21st Century by means of Poetry, Arts and Music". This means that your work is the work of students and your school has been recognized at the highest European level.

As a result, you will receive a certificate that you can attach to your site and expose it in a prominent place in your school. Also, the project will appear in a special area of the European Portal at www.etwinning.net.

Once again, congratulations on this unique achievement and we hope to meet you during an eTwinning event during the year.

With best greetings

eTwinning Team"

Afterwards, Katerina Fyssaki wrote on Facebook group:

• 

Katerina Fyssaki

The european quality label is now a reality! I know, I am becoming, again and again, so importune and tedious. But without you, dear colleagues, dear pupils, we, the five schools from Germany, Spain, Greece, Italy and Cyprus, we would not have anything. No prize, no award, no experience, no nice collaboration! I thank you, you and your students, because we worked together so beautifully for two years. I miss you all!

Carmen Flores added:

Carmen Flores 29 Οκτωβρίου 10:52 μ.μ. Great news for all of us!!! We've got the same in Spanish ;-)  and

Anna Curto Naffissi 7 Νοεμβρίου 12:17 μ.μ. The coordinating German school has also been rewarded for the work at the common project. As Katerina underlined this is the result of a wonderful and fruitful cooperation among nine countries. Thank you to everybody, teachers and students, who made all this possible.

5 eTwinning Quality Labels

This is the 5th eTwinning quality label for Ms Vivian Toffi Choratidou and the Upper Secondary School in Agia Fylaxi, Limassol, Cyprus, which is awarded to our project "Human Rights in Europe":

Just now (23/10/2013) our project won the 4th eTwinning Quality label through our colleague  Mr Max Quattrini from ITIS "Luigi Trafelli" in Nettuno/Italy.

Congratulations to all in Nettuno Team, teachers and students.

It's nice!!! Τhe quality of our project is already recognised  3 times...

After the German and the Spanish school now the Greek one and Ms Katerina Fyssaki have been awarded for our project "Human Rights in Europe" with the Etwinning Quality Label by the Greek Support Service. 

This award is encouraging and motivating our teachers and pupils. Congratulations to all schools.

The second award was for the Spanish school and the teacher Carmen Flores.

The first award came for the German school and the teacher of English language Ms Anna Curto Naffissi, one of the co-ordinators of the Comenius project.

Final Report Form - Project description (E1)

The main objective of this project was to make students aware of being part of a historically grown community that shares a common system of values based on freedom and equality. As these rights have unfortunately often been violated, there is the necessity for all the members of this community to respect and defend them if they want to become constructively critical European citizens. Our students have dealt with this topic by the means of Poetry, Arts and Music. The project was created by 9 schools from Czech Republic, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland and Spain. The teachers, Anna Curto and Holger Schmidt from Karben/Germany, had the responsibility of the coordination of the whole project.

Early in the first year a blog was created by the Greek team and it proved to be an important tool for the dissemination of our common work. As part of the project the team from the Italian partner of Nettuno composed a kind of "Human Rights hymn" and more verses were added to it by the students from the other partner countries. In addition to the common hymn the song "Don't give up" on human rights was created by the German partner. Both songs were sung by an international student choir in a concert during our end-of- year meeting in Chieti/Italy in May 2012.

Additionally, during the first year the partners worked for the production of logos, Power Point presentations on the evolution of Human Right in partner’s countries, poems and drama scenes, all based on the topic "Human Rights" and presented during the meetings.

During the second year of the partnership all members involved worked on a) photographs for a competition in Poland, b) drama scenes for the meeting in France and c) the final musical “A Flower to the Enemy” which was composed by the Nettuno team, translated in English by the Greek team and was presented in Germany.

All the activities carried out during the 2 years of the project implied a lot of coordination work from all partner schools, intensive rehearsals during the meetings but were at the same time an excellent opportunity for the creation of strong bonds of friendship between all the people involved.

Moreover, the students had the chance to participate in various workshops, discussions and excursions based on various aspects of Human Rights violations: racial discrimination, homophobia and sexism to mention a few. Thanks to the participation in the project all teachers and pupils alike had the chance to reflect on the subject of Human Rights, to express themselves through various forms of art but also to learn to use new forms of technology. Most of the products of the project have been uploaded on our blog at http://humanrights-in-europe.blogspot.com. The progress of the project was constantly evaluated through questionnaires for students and teachers separately, created by the Spanish team and all the relevant reports may be seen on the blog as well.

European Shared Treasure - Project description

http://www.europeansharedtreasure.eu/

The European project partners see Europe as a historically grown community that shares a common system of values, regarding freedom and equality for all human beings as its essential principles. We want to make our students aware of these cultural similarities but also of the fact that these high values are often violated so that there is a necessity for every single member of this community to take responsibility and to protect them in our daily lives.

This means that these rights also come along with certain duties and requirements like integration efforts, respect and tolerance instead of exclusion or intolerance.

We are convinced that especially the current threat of international terrorism which spreads not only fear but also xenophobia and generalizing prejudice must not put the liberal basis of Europe at risk.

So the project's aim is not only to make the educative community aware of the importance of human rights by using music, language and arts, but also to respect and defend those rights so as to become constructively critical European citizens.

Our purpose is furthermore to use creative means together with ICT skills to improve the target language and to develop solidarity and cooperation between students from the EU. The topic chosen will be Freedom, Equality and Human Rights so as to raise the students' awareness of these issues and develop their ability to deal with integration  within the EU.

Not only language helps bridging the gap to understanding and cooperation but also music and art as non-verbal means of communication play an important part in our project. Applied in lyrics, poems, songs, videos or drawings the aesthetic dimension will help to see beyond the pure communicational purpose.

Results list

Italian Newspaper Article

In occasion of our third meeting in Chieti a local journalist come to interview students and teachers from different delegations. Here is the article:

Human Rights' Day

ITCG Galiani Main Hall: a representative of Amnesty International on 10th December 2011 in occasion of 63rd anniversary of the declaration of Human Rights. 

Conclusions from Vallbona's students

Greetings from Vallbona

Student's reflections

Farewell time!

Credits

Conclusions from Vallbona's teachers

Amparo Garcia - Spanish team coordinator

Translation from Catalan into English 

Hello! I’m Amparo Garcia, head of studies in this school, as well as the (Spanish) Comenius coordinator together with my beloved Carmen Flores.

Before saying some thank-you words to everybody, I would like to sum up how this lovely relationship between the Comenius project and this high-school took place. It all started in the spring of 2010, when the leader team of our school thought and decided to open its doors to new national and international projects, finding in the Comenius projects one of the best options for our students to travel abroad, improve their languages, became more mature, cooperate with foreign countries and became in the end discerning and tolerant students.

In September 2010 we begun to look for possible matches and we found a German led project about the Human Rights through music, poetry and art, which we decided to join up. Carmen Flores and I attended the preparatory visit in Karben in November 2010, and we prepared the 67-sheet document needed to hand over in Madrid.

On the first days of July 2011 we received two great announcements: Madrid had approved the project and we had the maximum number available for student’s mobilities (20).

The participant countries where about to be German, The Czech Republic, Poland, France, two schools from Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Spain and, unfortunately, a Romanian school whose country did not concede the required approval for participation, and failed to join the project.

The experience during these two years has been really incredible and thus, I want to give some thank-you words. First of all, thanks to the students who took an attempt in the different competitions to win mobilities as well to the students who were selected to join the project. Thanks for being so incredible, we are really proud of you because you proved we can take you everywhere, making us feel really good among you in every meeting, and for the great role you played all the time. Thanks also to all the participant Comenius teachers we’ve met in every meeting, because we’ve found really good friends in you, thanks to our school partners who covered our lessons while we attended the meetings, and also to the crazy teachers who didn’t hesitate to take part in this project in a very dynamic way. In the third place, I would like to give thanks to the families, because you entrusted us leaving your children in our hands, for the help you offered when we needed you, and also for being there all the time helping us to construct a better education for your children.

I want to give special thanks to Carmen Flores, the alma mater in this project. Without her, you can believe me when I say this project would have been really hard, so… THANK YOU Carmen!

And that’s all I wanted to say to you, I hope you have enjoyed the experience through your schoolmates and children. We have asked for a new Comenius project for the next two years, if we are lucky. Have a nice summer, take some rest, enjoy all the time and refill your batteries because we will meet next September. Kisses!

Carmen Flores - Spanish team coordinator

Susanna Farré - Vallbona d'Anoia's High School Headmistress

Translation from Catalan into English

Hello! I’m Susanna Farré, the high school principal here in Vallbona. I was invited to participate in this video edition and it’s my turn to represent all the appreciation for this work done by all the members.

First of all I would like to congratulate the students who decided to take part in this project. Maybe they were unconscious of the whole project at first, but they achieved to widen their knowledge and they also made us realise of how valuable our work is as teachers.

On the other hand I want to recognise and appreciate the entirely implication of the whole team of teachers along this two Comenius years. Special thanks to the coordinators but also to all the teachers who have dedicated a large amount of hours working in and out the school, and to the teachers who went with our students abroad to attend the meetings.

Travelling abroad visiting the Comenius partners’ countries has allowed us to collect little pieces of each culture, traditions and different ways to act. We’ve learned about their educative systems and we’ve realised we are also doing quite well, but we’ve also seen how to improve in other issues, because this project has given us an European scope difficult to obtain if not under the Comenius conceiving.

Finally I just want to express gratitude to all the people, like students and families who contributed to this project and made it possible. Maybe it’s true that there’s a sixth sense because this gratitude can be noticed in the atmosphere among us. That’s all from me, so THANK YOU and I encourage to everyone.

Teachers' reflections (Joan Pere Roselló and Pilar Rodríguez)

Human Rights Eve and Salvador Espriu Remembrance

On 21^st June 2013 we celebrated the traditional yearly dinner at school to close the school year with families, students, teachers and staff. It was held outside at the school’s football playground on a full moon night and it was called “The Eve of Human Rights” because music, poems and dances which students represented on stage were all vindicating our human rights, especially the rights to freedom of thought, education and home.

The Comenius team also presented our closure video on Comenius, which we will upload very soon, where our principal, students, parents, and teachers involved in this Comenius project talk about their experiences and the project’s impact on school and on their lives.

Since it was the anniversary of the birth of Salvador Espriu (1913-1985), one of our best Catalan poets, some of his poems denouncing the lack of freedom of thought and speech and the violation of human rights during the Franco’s dictatorship in Spain were read and interpreted by our students while other students played or danced to the music. On these links below you can learn more about our universal poet.

http://www.lletra.net/en/author/salvador-espriu

http://www.escriptors.cat/autors/esprius/pagina.php?id_text=2576

We also said goodbye to some of our most compromised students in this Comenius project finishing their studies at our high school. You’ll remember the twins Elena and Mariona, and also Aleth and Sara. Apart from being great individuals, they have participated in several Comenius mobilities and most interestingly, they have drawn three mini-projects of action in the framework of Comenius to improve the lives of our educative community and bring human rights to life in SES Vallbona.

Below you can see some pictures on the “Eve of Human Rights” at SES Vallbona d’Anoia.

And some videos:

Enjoy your summer holidays...

There really isn't anything more beautiful like the Summer Holiday. The feeling of anticipation and excitement in the build up; lazy days spent on the beach topping up your tan; nice afternoons on the hills enjoying the sunset; exciting nights, exploring  the stars on the sky with friends and beloved persons.

Wishing the very best for you, dear friends, I'll see you again in September.
Lots of love...
Katerina

Scopelos

Syros

Zante - Zakynthos

Balloon event in Karben!

6th Meeting in Karben

Balloon event at school
Human Rights day celebration

(photos by PATRICK JORDAN)

The French students wrote SONGS

The french students wrote songs 

More PowerPoint presentations from Comenius

French Posters

Posters of our project

More PowerPoint presentations from Comenius

Our photos for the Poraj exhibition "Human Rights on camera"

Article 18, Declaration of Human Rights "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance." To realize these pictures, our comenius group of students worked together, discussing the ideas, then walking in the streets of Valence to take pictures, and finally realizing montages. The final work was done by Lucie and Célia

Texts written in class and in the 2011-2012 Drama workshop

This PowerPoint is made after two different projects at school : one in an English class,during which the students worked on human rights and inequalities, and, as a final task, had to write about a situation that shocked them in their own environment. The second project was the writing of short texts and scenes during the drama workshop with Sam, Corentin and Quentin preparing for the Chieti meeting. These scenes became the basis of the common final production in Chieti.

Equality - Justice

Wangcheng - SI de Vallbona

Pictures of the visit of the Tibetan monk Thubten Wangcheng. He is the director of Casa del Tibet (Tibetan House) in Barcelona.

He came to our highschool to deliver a presentation on human rights in Tibet to our students.

Nadia Ghulam - SI de Vallbona

Conference by Nadia Ghulam at SI de Vallbona


Nadia Ghulam, Afghanese, came to Catalonia five years ago to undergo surgery as a consequence of a bomb that exploded in her house when she was 9. She was in a coma for 6 months. When she got out of it, the muhjaidins killed his brother. Living in Afghanistan, where women lack freedom and rights, she disguised herself as a boy (Zalmai) to help feed her family: mother, a father that became mentally unbalanced, and two little sisters. She currently lives in Badalona with what she calls her Catalan family.

On the 29th February 2012, she delivered a conference for our students and presented her book

Back 2 our comenius project (2nd year of implementation)

Summer holidays are over....
The weather is getting cooler...
The days are getting shorter...
and soon we meet you again!

We have had some changes; some students have graduated and some teachers changed schools. Their contribution on project's issues has been very significant during the 1st year of implemetation of the project.
 

Anyway, hope we do have a position and are ready to start a great school year and a wonderful second year of the project's implementation!

We are preparing our participation to the 4th Comenius project Meeting in Poraj and we thank the Polish Team for the organization. 

Back 2 school!

We hope you spent wonderful and relaxing vacations!

But now, it's the time to wish a good new school year for all, teachers and students.