Late October 2009 the PARTEA group held its first partner meeting in Almansa hosted by our energetic Spanish co-ordinator Miguel and his wonderful team of colleagues from Centro de Profesores de Almansa as well as family members. A year had passed since we first met during the Grundtvig contact seminar in Helsinki in November 2008, and everyone were exited to gather and get the project going. The Danish member even so exited that she forgot her suitcase in the local train to Almansa, but luckily she got it back the day before departure!

We all contributed to finalising the project application in February 2009 and were extremely pleased to get the message in summer 2009 that all of the eight partners had been approved by their National Agencies.

The team in Almansa had arranged a very nice programme introducing us to Spanish culture by sight-seeing in the local and regional area. We visited the castle of Almansa, a medieval town called Cocentaina and Valencia. It was amazing to see the ‘City of Arts and Sciences’ in Valencia, buildings of very modern architecture designed by Santiago Calatrava, e.g. one looking like a fish with an open mouth, another like an eye, and both of them placed in a water basin covered by mosaic.

PARTEA Team in Almansa (Spain Mobility)

Above them, a huge harp-like thing reached for the skies. We also experienced the Spanish habit of eating waffles dipped in a thick, thick chocolate sauce. Needs a huge cup of coffee on the side for a Dane!

Shortly after arrival the guest were welcomed by the Mayor and local media at the City Council. The Mayor Mr. Antonio López and the local councillor of Education and Culture, Mr. Alfredo Calatayud.

The group went to visit a secondary school, a primary school as well as an adult education centre. The secondary school is a very well-maintained school with nice computer facilities, smart boards etc. It has a number of students from minority groups: Bulgarian, Chinese, Moroccans and British, and the school receives extra resources and arrange special programmes for the

minorities. The minority students typically get lower results and some do not get their exams. The school tries to meet challenges, e.g. by working specifically with Spanish as a foreign language; by translating all main documents into the mother tongue of the minority groups; in teaching religion the students have three choices: -Catholicism, - religion history or self studies. The school has hired mediators/social workers to do conflict solving. The teachers experience that motivation is lacking, home work is neglected, ‘cyber-bullying’ and shouting among youngsters.

PARTEA – FIRST NEWSLETTER

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Helsinki 2008

Pre-school from 3-5 years is not compulsory, but almost everyone sends their children. Education is free and children are taught English 90 minutes per week. The lessons are from 9:15 – 1 p.m. and from 3:30 – 5 p.m., with a lunch break at home in-between. This requires that someone is at home who can pick-up and care for the child. It is a system quite different from countries in Northern Europe.

In the primary school there is a parents’ association arranging social gatherings and helping the school during festivals. None of the minority parents participate in the arrangements, maybe because membership of the association requires payment. The school has a welcome plan for new foreign families and they interview and fill out a questionnaire for each family. Students are used as interpreters. The Greek partner informs that in Greece it is not legal to perform interviews of new families. He also adds that traditionally students are divided in classes according to their surname, which has resulted in a lot of minority children in the same class, since there are a lot of minorities in his area with the same surname: Singh! The authorities do not acknowledge the problem by changing the system. The school council consists of half parents, half teachers. The head master has the final say. In Denmark, the head of the school council is a parent representative, and a priori he/she has the final say.

Infant education classroom

The adult education centre is popular with 530 students; 140 attend computer courses and 230 are there to qualify their secondary education. Spanish as a second language is another popular course, primarily Moroccans and British attend. Some of them do not write or read their mother tongue.

I also learned that, in some ways, Spain moves away from globalisation by requiring that students have to learn the regional language in order to attend an education in another region in Spain.

Ivan, our Spanish webmaster, introduced the PARTEA group to the webpage – how to login, upload materials, etc. We had a discussion on mobilities and made some changes in the plan. Thus, we will be visiting Belgium in March instead of Romania. We had long discussions on the questionnaires to be filled out by minority parents and teachers back in each country. Our Turkish partner might have problems with the questionnaires since these have to be approved by the Ministry of Education before contacting the school. Inspired by our Romanian partner, we decided to prepare an introduction letter from PARTEA, which can be used in contacting schools and parents’ associations (letter is attached). In Romania, already 72 schools have shown interest in participating in the project.

We were also pleased to be introduced to the Spanish kitchen, the wine and the dancing. The local team had arranged some wonderful evenings in a private setting with lots of good food, live music, dancing and singing. I look forward to laughing together again. ☺

High school classroom

CULTURAL FLASH

SPAIN

1. ALMANSA · 2. COCENTAINA · 3-4. VALENCIA · 5. CAUDETE

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It was very interesting to finally meet again and start the discussions of the core theme of the project: how to improve the co-operation and dialogue between teachers and minority parents? A lot of views were shared as well as ideas – such as this small, but effective one from our Turkish partner: ‘use the mobile phone, send an sms when reminding parents to show up at a meeting’.

The second project meeting took place in Brussels from 17th – 21st March 2010 arranged by a nice team of four from Brusselleer – a language training center. Brussels is a very multicultural city with the prestigious buildings of the European Union next to the African neighbourhood, where especially the Saturday afternoons are very busy with Africans coming from all over the Brussels area to shop and have their hair done – in a traditional African way of course; a very lively and colourful place to experience.

Our host team had arranged a very nice ‘get-together quiz’ at the beginning of the meeting, where all participants where divided in mixed groups and had to discuss and decide upon 15 questions about the Belgian culture – as an example, I learned that René Magritte (him with a painting of a pipe underlined by ‘this is not a pipe’) is the founder of Surrealism. It was a very nice way of drawing upon all competences of the participants, e.g. in my group, Johnny from Romania knew the colours of the local beers and Erdovan from Turkey was able to answer the sports issues. During our working meetings, we discussed the status of filling in and uploading data from parents and teachers questionnaires. All have been busy, but slowly results are coming in and the aim is to have a common report: ‘European State of Art’ ready for discussion at our next meeting in Greece by the end of June.

The experiences and challenges of each country vary a lot. In London, our partner Anba had experienced quite some hostility from the teachers, not wanting her to interview the parents regarding collaboration. In Liverpool, the teachers have been open to learn about the different cultures of the parents and mentioned sexual education as an issue which was difficult to handle in collaboration with parents. The teachers are however very sceptical whether PARTEA will succeed in engaging the minority parents, since they have found it difficult to establish a dialogue themselves. In Romania, our partner Maria, had decided to cooperate with the local police to get the information from parents, since they already have a lot of contact with the minority groups. In Spain, it turns out that the female teachers have difficulties in getting respect among parents – even among female parents. In Turkey, the Kurdish parents are very suspicious to get in contact and answer the questionnaires. In Greece, many migrant parents do not want to mention their occupation – maybe due to labour legislation or a question of status? Most often they are occupied in the agricultural sector taking low-paid jobs that Greek people do not want to occupy. We decided to change the mobility plan in order to fit in Romania, meaning that the PARTEA team will visit Denmark in January, Turkey in April and Romania in June 2011.

The Director of Brusselleer gave a presentation of the Belgian education system which is complicated because of the three different languages of Belgium: French, Flemish (Dutch) and German. The majority of the population, around 70%, speaks French as the daily life language, which makes it difficult for foreigners to practice Dutch in Brussels.

Project meeting in Brussels

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However, most foreigners prefer to learn both languages, thus giving them more job opportunities. The education for teachers differs. Primary teachers study three years, but secondary and higher level teachers have a five year university degree. This is different from Denmark, where primary and secondary teachers have the same four years education, and each school is allowed to hire and fire teachers – contrary to Spain where all teachers are hired by the Ministry of Education or the Regional Governments. In Belgium, all newcomers have the possibility to participate in a six-month training course in their mother tongue, to learn about the Belgian society, rules, legislation, etc. It is very different from Denmark, where parents get this information in Danish quite early after arrival.

We visited a real multicultural school in a less wealthy area of Brussels. There were around 400 pupils of 15 different nationalities, most coming from Turkey and Morocco. It is a Dutch school and in order to secure practising of Dutch also during the summer holidays, the school arranges ‘summer school’ for children with Dutch as the second or third language. It is not a traditional school, but much more creative, practical and with sports activities. The cost of the parents is only EUR 20 for four weeks, from 9 am to 4 pm every day. During this period, four workshops for parents are also arranged – on issues such as ‘how to support my child in the educational system’. Besides that, the school has classes for parents, where they learn the same as their children as well as ‘everyday issues,’ thus creating more connection between what the child experiences at home and at school. The school does not pay so much attention to the age of the child, but rather looks upon the stage of development, when placing them in a class. This is different from the UK, where they strictly stick to classmates being of the same age.

Visit to Primary school

I asked a teacher what she thought was the most challenging issue in dealing with minority parents. She answered: ‘The most difficult part is to put myself in the shoes of the parents and understand their situation and background’. I thought it was a very fine statement highlighting the fact both parties have to work hard to get integration to succeed.

The team also visited an evening language class with parents from ‘all over the world’ – Burundi, Russia, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Syria, Ecuador, Congo, etc., and we all tried to learn a bit of Dutch. Afterwards, we were served a wonderful homemade Moroccan meal. One of the last days we were ‘honoured guests’ at a reception at Brusselleer celebrating the opening of new teaching facilities. The Minister of Education Van Raes and the local media attended and saw an exhibition of the PARTEA project and our Co-ordinator gave a speech to all guests. There was a fantastic atmosphere with lots of visitors, music and food from different countries.

We also had the pleasure of a walking guided tour of central Brussels with amusing historical stories, an introduction to the famous chocolate of Belgium, a visit to the Atomium, which was built for the world exhibition in 1958 and finally, another wonderful homemade Senegalese meal in the apartment of our Belgian partner, Frank. Again it was a huge pleasure to experience the intercultural dialogue taking place in our project team and we laughed a lot. Miguel, our Spanish Co-ordinator has now learned the meaning of ‘In Shallah’ when responding to a question of how many people where coming to Spain, Asha from Liverpool answered: ‘Asha In Shallah’ and Miguel responded: ‘Is In Shallah a man or a woman?’.

At the last fine dinner, I was sitting next to Dawie, who has an Italian mum and a dad from Congo. Close by, Erdovan from Turkey was getting tired since he did not really speak English – however suddenly he got very talkative when he learned that Dawie’s father had been playing for the Congolese national football team and Dawie had been professional himself.

It is positive that so many different interests and issues can bring people together and make the world a bit more understandable. ☺