Teacher Training 1 – Salamanca/SPAIN

STEMS_The Team

One of the main objectives of the STEMS Project was to develop teachers’ profession by supporting them in dealing with diversified groups of learners such as refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, and also a distinctive feature of STEMS is supporting both students with migrant background and teachers of migrant students.

After Salamanca University performing the Situation / Need Analysis (O1), they prepared a Teacher Training taking into account report to some extent. Teachers from partner schools, the project team of Bursa MEM (they’re also teachers) took this training.

By attending this training, participants had the opportunity to;
* experience activities that motivate migrant students to fully participate in class, increasing class cohesion and
reducing early school leaving,
* acquire new tools to observe, approach and engage multicultural classes, feeling more self-confident and prepared
when facing interculturality,
* take part in practical workshops with other teachers from different countries to share opinions, practices,
methodologies and tools
* develop teaching methodologies to promote integration at school and to improve learning abilities for newly foreign
students or drop out students.

This training will underlie the Output 2 – Teacher Guidebook / Online Tool

Dissemination Activities

Since the beginning of the project, the activities and results of the project have been intensively explained. For this purpose, we organized meetings and prepared pieces of information related with the STEMS project as long as the
content is compatible with the content we organize as the R & D Unit Projects Team of Bursa Provincial Directorate of National Education.
Salamanca University presented its findings in the Status and Needs Analysis, the first idea of our project, at an international conference and these findings were published as an academic paper which was also signed
by the Bursa Provincial Directorate of National Education. In the same way, Salamanca University described the intellectual output of the project to 100 teachers who received a Master’s Degree in Information and Communication
Technologies. IES Ruiz de Alda Secondary School has given detailed information about the project and its intellectual outputs to 54 teachers who teach immigrant students. In total, we have been able to reach 248 people face to face with the help of Multiplier Events. Apart from that, all responsible partners performed the Multiplier Activities. Our project has actively informed everyone about its activities through its website and Facebook. Twitter is also one of the channels we use again.

Click below to download the academic article.

Inclusion of the students in schools with an intercultural profile

Multiplier Events

The Multiplier Events which were held in 5 different project partner countries contributed to the development of IO 1 & 2 – Need Situation Analysis & Teacher’s Guidebook. Except for Bursa’s Multiplier Event, they all functioned as a way to find volunteers who would like to work for SIP, the third output. Bursa organized its Multiplier Event after all the outputs were created.
While planning the Multiplier Events, all the partner organizations aimed at inviting as many educational institutions of their city and schools interested in the topic of integration of immigrant students as possible.

 

The target groups were reached through an extended mailing (prepared according to the list of schools published on public authority websites), online advertisement (Partner Institutions’ website, social media) and official papers calling them to participate in the project. Plenty of teachers, office workers and institutional leaders have been reached personally and invited officially. Also, psychological-pedagogical centres and non-governmental organisations were given printed invitations and were invited to participate through a short face-to-face presentation of the event and the main project goals.
The five different events have been organised in the different centres of the organizations – generally the most representative room of their institution.

 

We all tried to show a very practical context of our work and a link between what has been already done and the future final actions in the project. Presenting mentoring as a psychological and methodological tool supportive for teachers and mentees we wanted to engage schools in cooperation and encourage NGOs and local educational institutions to join us.
Among our guests, there were local educational authorities representatives. We developed our agenda beginning with the background of our project and general perspective on immigrants in Europe. We wanted to show what are the tasks of institutions in the process of effective integration and what are the obstacles on the way to it.

 

Additionally, we aimed to present the audience with the very deep psychological context of the family members who try to start a new life in a new place, what they feel, what they worry about, how they may react to our initiatives and support. We also showed how to use the Online Tool in practice, bearing in mind the very individual perspective of different newcomers even from the same nationality or country.
After introducing the two main outputs in the project we moved to present mentoring as a part of the Student Integration Programme – the final output of the project. Then we held on a Question and Answer session where the
participants asked questions about what they had in their minds both about the project and how to be able to make a successful project application like STEMS.

 

Teacher Training 2 – Giessen/GERMANY

The last teacher training program of our project was held on between 26-31 August 2018 in Giessen, Germany. Volunteer activities for immigrant students were carried out in the program, which was held mainly at the WSO,
a vocational school where immigrant students receive an education.
Examples of volunteer mentoring in Giessen were examined. In addition, Online Tool development activities and project dissemination activities were discussed.

 

3rd Transnational Meeting, Murcia, Spain

In the 3rd Transnational Meeting of the project, the team members gathered in Murcia, Spain. Here in this meeting the advancement of the intellectual output, Guide Book was discussed. And another discussion was made about how to form the Online Tool and then it was planned. After then, the coordinator gave some briefing about finances and everybody checked whether all the institutions were doing well with what was planned at that time.

A presentation was also made by the coordinator again about how to plan the Multiplier Events.

2nd Transnational Meeting, Szczecin, Poland

The second management meeting of the STEMS project, which aims to find solutions to the academic problems of immigrant students and their teachers, took place on 24-25 July 2017 at the campus of Collegium Balticum University (Szczecin, Poland) under the coordination of Bursa Provincial National Education Directorate.

Salamanca University and IES Ruiz De Alda Middle School from Spain, Giessen Regional Education Directorate from Germany, Collegium Balticum University from Poland, Torre dei Giovani, a non profit oriented organization from Italy, Bursa Provincial National Education Directorate and Bursa Mihrapli Abdulkadir Can Anatolian Imam Hatip High School teams came together for a second time to proceed on the project.

After each team making detailed presentations on the first step of the project, Intellectual Output 1 – Needs Analysis, the ways to follow about Intellectual Output 2 – Teacher Training were discussed and final concurrence was reached.

Teacher training will be held at Salamanca University, Spain, on 13-17 November 2017.

Kick-off meeting, Bursa, Turkey

The Kick-off meeting of Project STEMS has taken place in Bursa MEM premises on the 27th and 28th of April, 2017. Teams of GRIAL, Salamanca UniversityStaatliches Schulamt für den Landkreis Gießen und den VogelsbergkreisSzczecińska Szkoła Wyższa Collegium BalticumIES Ruiz de Alda, and Mihraplı Abdulkadir Can Anadolu İmam Hatip Lisesi came together to meet for the first time in person.

After each team made presentations which give details about their institutions, the ways to be followed in the Intellectual Output 1 – Need Analysis have been discussed and finally agreed upon.

The 2nd transnational meeting is going to be held in Szczecin, Poland on 24th and 25th of July.