Comenius Magazine

2013-2015

News from the second year!

Timrå gymnasium, Sweden

Well being in mind!2 years has suddenly come to an end. 2 years of planning, working, communicating, thinking, meeting, learning and laughing! Working with this project, with this partners and people has been wonderful for me. I have learned so much, met so many interesting students and teachers from Turkey, Lithuania, Poland and Chez Republic that have made a lot of impressions on me as a teacher and a human being. Working as a teacher is amazing. Working in a international projects is even more amazing. You have a chance to see other countries and schools in a way you never do when you visit a country as a tourist. You meet people with the same profession as you, gets new colleagues and friends for life. Traveling with your own students very funny! You see them from a different perspective then in the classroom an ordinary school day. You get stronger relations and have ha chance to talk and socialize during the journeys. I think that´s good for me as a teacher and develop myself a lot.

Working with the topic “I feel good –Well being in a contemporary world” has been very interesting and funny. Health and lifestyle questions involves everyone in some ways and I think the topic is perfect to work with on a global level. Now when the project has come to an end I want to thank all the involved partnerschools for 2 really good years. I think and hope that we will meet and work more together in the future!! Take care!

Best regards from Elin Gradin

projectcoordinator at Timrå gymnasium, Sweden

The visit in Sweden -October 2015This was the first visit that I participated in and I got to meet a huge group of wonderful people that I will remember for the rest of my life. We all were a little bit nervous to meet all the people from all the different countries and we had been preparing for a long time. When all the people arrived it all fell in to place and that feeling I had during this visit – that feeling is something that I am going to keep close to my heart as long as I live.

So what did we do in Sweden? The focus was on social wellbeing and a big part of it was volunteering. All of the countries prepared a presentation about how their

school were active in volunteering.

One of the days we had a big culture festival were all the countries got to show some of their traditions. I think we had a lot of fun and shared memories and knowledge about each other.

One of my favorite events was one night when I took all of the students to ‘’Söråkers Folkets Hus’’. I got to show them the things in life that I appreciate the most and we just ate and had a great time.

The second last day we started the day on a mountain called ‘’Södra berget’’. We teamed up and went into the woods to do a quiz. After that we shared a meal in a big tent were the Swedish teachers cooked a typical outdoor Swedish meal.

We ended that day with a big dinner in our school. We got to share many different dishes that are typical for our country and we ended the dinner with games and sing-a-long.

The last day we saw a movie, eat an American buffet and went ice skating.

What are we taking with us from this visit? I am going to remember every single one of the persons I met during this week. I am going to remember all the laughter that we shared and of course I am going to remember all the things that we got to learn from each other.

Text and pictures: Anna Westin

Well being –the Swedish visit!

When the project came to Sweden I was quite nervous at first. I had wanted for so long to be a host family, but now I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t think I was brave enough to host someone who didn’t know and didn’t speak Swedish. But then I decided that it was a onetime experience and I just had to do it.

When it was time to pick them up at the airport I was so nervous but at the same time very happy, I had been emailing them for a while and I felt like I knew them and finally I was going to meet them.

The entire week was very fun and the three of us got along very well, my parents liked them a lot and I think everything was alright. The nervousness I had felt about being host family is now long gone, it just felt like having two close friends sleeping over for a while.

I think that now because of this I have made some new friends from a different country. It’s been a while since I met them and I actually miss them. I hope that someday I will meet them again, and who knows, maybe I can visit them the next time?

Reflections from a Swedish student

Well being in Lithuania-reflections from a Swedish teacher

I haven´t participated that much in this project. I joined the cultural work shop when we were the host school, and then I had the opportunity to follow Elin and our four students to Jonava in Lithuania. It was a nice trip with a lot of music and dancing and that really means well being to me.

I think the part I like the most was the lip dup. I like the song, it makes me happy, both the text and the performance regarding the You tube-video. Well being started therefore already at home, as I listened to the song several times to study it.

Than we had to practice our performance several times before filming. We also had to decide how to “act”, how we should stand and how we should move. It was fascinating to see how all school was involved in the film making. Students from Lithuania, foreign students, teachers and even the headmaster!

Then we had to film the lip dup. It was kind of tricky and it wasn´t successful at once so we had to do it all over again a couple of times. But it was fun and even the time in between filming were ok. And finally we made it!

And the best part is: I can watch it and listen to it how many times I like at You tube!

Ingegerd Henriksson

Teacher, Tigy, Sweden

Well-being - the best memory !My best memory from the project is when I where in Lithuania and where at the youth Centre and ate pizza, played table tennis, pool and had a football tournament.

At the day we were not told what we were going to do that evening because it was a surprise. So at the evening we were sitting in a car which drove to an unknown place for us and we were very excited.

When we arrived it was dark and we walked in to a house and up for some stairs and in to a room and there it was a pool table, table tennis and we were served pizza and everyone started to play pool and the soccer game and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Later in the evening we were told that we were

going to have a soccer tournament and everyone had to take a piece of paper and on that piece of paper it was a number and that girl or boy who had the same number as you, he or she was your teammate. My teammate was a girl from Czech.

We all played very good but one after one team lost and so they were out of the tournament, me and my teammate played very well and before we even knew it we stood in the finale and facing a team, I saw the wining in their eyes. It was a hard match but me and my teammate went out of the match like winners, and we can from that day and forever call our self the best soccer players in the whole Comenius!

Swedish Student

The Comenius Project “Well Being” in Poland -2015 –reflections from a Swedish student!

I have been a part of the Comenius Well Being project and since I joined the project me and my family has been a host family here in Sweden and that experience was really interesting and extraordinary. I have also been to Poland and that was a really great experience as well, first of all because I have never been to Poland and because everything was totally new to me.

Being a host for someone from another country and being a guest in another country, living in a host family was fun. First of all I got to practice my English and at the beginning I felt nervous and my English was not that good, I stammered and lost the words but after a while it just got easier and easier to speak. It was nice to meet so many new people from different countries trying to communicate with each other and it was not always easy but it worked. That is what I think is so great and so fun with this project, that you get to meet new people from different countries and learn about their lives and their culture. You get new friend and you grow as a person and at the same time you learn a lot of new things. When I was in Poland I had a great time, with new experiences every day and a learn many things. I learned, among other things as well, about how to sit right on a chair (the best position to sit in on a chair), about ho to decorate a classroom and a lot about how people live there in Poland.One of the thing that got stuck in my brain the most, except from learning about Poland and other things, was the trip to the concentration camp Majdanek. That was really something

unbelievable and something very interesting. I learned a lot about how it was to live in a concentration camp, what the prisoners were exposed to and all the horrible things that happened there. I can not really find the right words to describe that experience but even though I have heard a lot of what happened at the concentration camps and I have worked with it at school it is just unexplainable to visit such a camp yourself. I mean it is one thing to read about it in school and hear people talk about it but it is another to actually see it for yourself. I wish everyone would get the chance to go and do what I got do to, visit a concentration camp and at the same time learn a lot about the things that happened in the past. I think that is important and the learning gets so much more fun, easy, and interesting.

Swedish student -2015