 Hi everyone, good afternoon and thank you for joining us today and today we have gathered here to talk about intercultural learning. This is the systematic webinar of the School Education Gateway, the initiative of European Union and is a place to engage with European policy and practice for school education. My name is Ina and I'm very happy to support this webinar together with my colleague Asi. So today's focus will be on social inclusion and intercultural learning as key components of the for the effective communication. We'll have a chance today to look into the the whole school approach and point to the tools that can be used for nurturing intercultural competence in the classroom. This will be explained by Isabella Jurczyk-Arnot who is the head of education and training at the European Federation for intercultural learning. And the second part of the webinar will be dedicated to the practical side. We will be introduced to the European Union and Council of Europe joint project in school which aims at enhancing social inclusion of Roma by promoting inclusive education and training. We have here with us Dennis Durmisch who is currently coordinating the implementation of this project in school as part of the Roma and Travellers team of the school of the Council of Europe in Strasburg. And he'll be co-presenting with Smaranda Vitek who will focus on the school level of the project. So this is our agenda for today and just a quick note before giving the floor to our speakers is that the session will be recorded and will publish the recording on the webinar page as usual. And if at any moment you have any questions please feel free to post them in the question and answer box and we'll make sure to come back to these questions and ask as many questions as possible to our speakers after their presentation. So I hope that everything is clear and I'm very excited to listen to our speakers. Isabella if you are ready I'm happy to give you the floor. Hello thank you very much for this nice introduction and for inviting me. I'm going to share my screen okay I hope you will be able to see it now. So my input focuses on intercultural learning at school but my main purpose here of this presentation is motivating and helping teachers to take active steps in nurturing intercultural competence among pupils at school and hopefully we'll get there by the end. Now a few words about the organization I represent. So the European Federation for Intercultural Learning is a European NGO that promotes and fosters intercultural learning in different educational settings formal and non-formal. That means that we have to do with schools but we also have to do with out of school context associations volunteer activities and among our key activities there are projects stimulating exactly cooperation between these formal and non-formal contexts between schools and civil society organizations. We also run training and develop resources for educators and again for educators in formal settings and for non-formal educators and the very key interest is international mobility of pupils and this is the key activity of our member organizations our national member organizations called AFS you can see here the logo it's it's maybe a name that you have heard in your countries. The topic of the one we are is intercultural learning and I can imagine that you have your own understanding of intercultural learning I think you were also asked to fill in a survey in preparation where you were asked to define intercultural learning for you and you might have dealt with it under very different headings different labels and I would like to share with you some of these labels that exist at international level. So you can see here the OECD Council of European European Unions so the international institutions that have put different frameworks in place that have a lot to do with intercultural learning so the OECD talks about global competence and you may be aware of the PISA assessment that was focusing on global competence in 2018. The Council of Europe has the framework of competences for democratic culture and there again intercultural competence is very strongly embedded in it and that also has an assessment framework inside. UNESCO talks about global citizenship and also intercultural dialogue and finally European Union has different moments it talks about intercultural learning but recently it's the common values of freedom tolerance and non-discrimination that we hear a lot about and I can imagine that many of you have different national curricula different national frameworks under which intercultural learning somehow is embedded. It's also becoming more present more popular I think it's more and more recognized as relevant for education but I would like maybe now to scratch a little bit deeper what we actually mean and why intercultural learning is important. So I have here a little image that you may recognize. This is something that happened just a few weeks ago in France so in brief there was a very sad story of beheading of a teacher after he showed caricatures of Mohammed and that was followed by demonstrations lots of Islamophobic demonstrations among others and that again was followed by some demonstrations against Islamophobia so something that has a lot to do with intercultural dialogue something that has a lot to do with schools certainly something very relevant happening but let me show you another thing here I don't know if you recognize this so these are two maps of something also quite recent the first one is the results of the presidential election in the US in Pennsylvania just a few days ago and the second is a few months ago the results of presidential election in Poland and you may see that there is a lot in common between these two maps so there is this huge divide that you can see and the divide is not only regional but there is a huge divide between rural and urban population so why am I showing these maps here and what does it have to do with intercultural learning and that's maybe something that is not so obviously looked at in this way well it does have a lot to do with dealing with difference and dealing with different world views and dialogue between these different world views and this is to say that for all of us we face this every day and it doesn't only have to do with international or interethnic issues intercultural learning is something that has to do with difference or difference of looking at the world so the definition that I have here that is a definition for me for my organization is that intercultural learning has to do with nurturing responsible citizens who can enter into dialogue between exactly between the different world views so into an interaction with people who are perceived as difference from from ourselves so an important word in this definition is perceived as different so this is something that we also might not talk so often about that it's our perception that makes it so relevant that makes it makes it work makes it work on the intercultural learning level we may think that we belong to a some group and we may perceive a different group as something completely from a different planet or different world view and this is what I mean by showing these different maps intercultural learning is something that doesn't only happen in diverse societies in the sense of international or or multi-ethnic dimension but it's something that happens in our everyday life in every context it's something relevant for every country or every local context that's that you're in I want to move on with something to help me a little bit understand who you are because I talked about the different contexts you are coming from I understand that that the listeners here are are very diverse teachers so I would like to invite you to to use Mentimeter maybe some of you have used this before so if you may go probably on your phone so a different device to menti.com and enter the code 62605 so you can see it on the screen hopefully and once you enter once you get in there you will be able to see a question and the question is what's what is your profile what kind of teacher or non-teacher are you so what I'm going to do I'm going to exit here this presentation and enter the Mentimeter to see the results of your answers so you will see there the different options you can choose from maybe some of these options there might be more than one option applying to you so then please pick the one that applies to you the most because I would like to see a little bit who you are who is attending this webinar so I can see already some answers appearing so the options here are your language teacher native language or foreign language teacher or maybe citizenship education ethics teacher or other subjects maybe you're a school headmaster or not a teacher or school staff at all okay so waiting still for your answers gradually I'm very happy that there are some some school heads present here that will have importance for some of the other content contents that I will talk about in a moment and then I'm also happy to see that there are not only language teachers not only English teachers here okay I don't know how many people should participate so we'll wait a little bit more for your answers my main message here also seeing who you are is that you came you chose to come to this webinar on intercultural learning but there is no default kind of teacher or school stuff that has to do with intercultural learning usually it's not associated with one school subject with one person it's something that's has let's say no no mother usually at school and it's not so clear to say who should deal with it so I'm happy to to see that we do have a diversity but it's also not surprising that there are lots of language teachers and I can also imagine that many are our foreign language teachers now okay and then I will maybe move on to to the second question so there are two questions on Mentimeter and the second question is about your experience with intercultural learning so far so you should now see on your devices on Mentimeter the second question with possibilities have you done intercultural learning activities at school already activities with the purpose of intercultural learning and here I'm asking the first two options are especially with with the main purpose of intercultural learning but then there is also an option of intercultural learning happening but not maybe being the primary goal fantastic I can see already many of you doing things that's very reassuring okay so yeah we said that maybe intercultural learning doesn't have a very clear place in the school but but it is happening and it may be happen happening single punctual times but some of you are passionate about it and do it multiple times and what is also important to recognize that it doesn't have to be the primary goal of activities okay I will I will go back to my presentation if I manage so we are back at at my presentation so thank you very much for your input for me it was also important to see a little bit how much you are in the topic and I'm happy to see that you're somewhat in the topic already somewhat involved but yeah the main message here is that intercultural learning and intercultural competence is transversal it's something happening at school in across different things so it may be associated with different school subjects from naturally some related to language maybe social sciences but also until I don't know physical education arts or even science as every competence intercultural competence includes knowledge skills attitudes and also values and in this case this component of skills attitudes and values is is particularly strong some of you may be familiar with the framework of key competences for lifelong learning developed by the EU so also their intercultural competence is embedded across transversal it's not associated with only one competence it's just as well in citizenship competence and language competence or social competence but it's also present in others let's say digital competences if you talk about media literacy intercultural media literacy is is a dimension of it what is also important to say is that it often helps to excel in other competences or sometimes it's even indispensable to excel in these other competences so it is clear that if we are talking about communication in a language if we are not able to manage this communication in an intercultural setting taking the intercultural aspects into account it will not be effective so it's it's a component that somehow is is there should be there naturally and because it's transversal it should also be trans addressed in a transversal way at school with multiple methods ideally of course it doesn't always happen but but that's that should be the case in in the ideal world so what are these different approaches different ways to include intercultural learning at school most natural or easiest and that's likely what you have done is integrating it in subject lessons so when you teach in your classes in different subjects you have a chance to do it as the as an activity with the main purpose of intercultural learning as some of you indicated in the mantimeters that you have done multiple times activities focused on that but it may be integrated in subject lessons also together with something else you can you can do an activity in physical education which focuses on physical skills but then you can also reflect on the activity on the level of diversity so you can hit two birds in with one stone or it can also be a very small element in in different subject classes so I don't already recognition of contribution of non-western scientists to to science is an element of intercultural education then some of you may be involved with team teaching so cross curricular teaching it's something that is becoming more and more present especially in some countries and there you have much more space to deal with intercultural learning through projects through classes over over more than one course of course a very natural thing is doing it as an extra curricular activity some afternoon classes also outside schools so projects or trips and so on this is also an element of intercultural learning and often these extra curricular activities involve external partners either involving them inside the school or or going outside then a very important bit which my organization focuses on is pupil mobility we'll talk about that a little bit more later and finally there is this this big word here whole school approach to intercultural learning and I'm very happy that we have some headmasters here because the whole school approach requires some commitments some strategic focus of the leadership of a school including it in a strategy but also involving multiple stakeholders of the school involving different activities not only punctually but regularly from teaching teaching methods to things like communication in the school or even arranging spaces in the school and it's then that the whole with the whole school approach that it's the most effective but the good news is that you don't need to be an expert to do intercultural learning and you have these different options above here on the slide and you can do it in small scale you can do it in bigger scale and it's worth doing it even if you if you if you don't if you are not perfect let's say from from day one the next thing I want to say about it okay you might not need to be an expert but there are certain methods certain approaches that are more effective for intercultural learning and maybe I'm stating the obvious here but here is a selection of some some of these methods or some of these approaches on different levels so there is experiential learning and that's very key here so something that includes a real experience reflecting on it on that experience and then drawing conclusions for the future from the experience there is a lot about cooperative or peer learning and and that works very well of course real life encounters in the community in our daily life but also then going abroad mobility service learning something maybe not all of you have heard of is this idea of of doing something for the benefit of of community or to address some human needs and then reflecting on this as well and that's why the word reflection here is is so important any experiential learning just requires this this careful reflection and then there there's all kinds of projects that that can be combined with all of this and the non-formal methods is like the umbrella words here used non-formal methods of course can be applied just as well at school and I talked earlier that as every competence intercultural competence has knowledge skills entities and values inside but it's especially skills entities and values that can be addressed by by these methods here so I promise to give you some motivation but also some tools to do things I have something very concrete here to share and something exactly focusing on on these methods that I mentioned this is a website that was developed in an Erasmus Plus funded project coordinated by my organization so in this website interculturallearning.eu you'll find a toolbox of methods there are about 40 methods they're assembled mostly experiential ones that are ready to use methods for you to take and use in in the classrooms the website is in English but the methods are translated also into French, German, Italian and Greek and they are sorted by different categories you can search and they are sorted by competence you can search through the competence lens but here what you can see on this slide is the division by the application context so this these categories I mentioned earlier the whole school approach cross-curricular teachers specific teaching specific subjects and then international mobility I'm not going to show you all the details you can explore yourself go yourself to the website I just show you an extract of one method so you can see the methods on the website or you can extract them as pdf it's step by step descriptions of activities and usually these are activities that fit into into the school context very well so they have very clear objectives as well clear step by step descriptions okay next to these tools what I also want to talk about briefly is the learning mobility which we believe in my organization is is particularly effective because it's immersing learners in in real situations and immersing them for usually a longer time and of course pupil mobility is the most natural one and we are talking about both group mobility class exchanges I'm sure many of you are involved in those but also individual mobility when a pupil goes abroad and goes to a school abroad uh so there's short and long term short term usually it's with with group mobility but then when we talk about individuals it's usually for long term so longer than two months or up to an entire school year and okay we are talking mostly about in person but there are also virtual mobility initiatives or blended in combining virtual with in person and these are particularly recently in the pandemic situation so you can also do a lot of these encounters in in the virtual world and the it weaning that many of you I'm sure are using is is a great tool for it but other than the pupil mobility we also have a teacher or staff school staff mobility so that is just as important because teachers need to develop their own intercultural competences to be able to to teach them so there is short visits study visits job shadowing but there is longer teaching assignments and training events or even online courses and many of these are organized by by organizations like my own by civil society organizations so not only official teacher education providers and one point I want to make here that you learn not only from sending not only from going abroad but you also learn from hosting international mobility that's something important and sometimes easier to organize than than going abroad and then I mentioned partnerships youth organizations are a very valuable partner because they specialize in non-formal methods so there are different local organizations or international ones that that you can consider for cooperation for pupil mobility I very much recommends cooperating with expert organizations such as AFS this is not so easy to set up and expert organizations can be a great partner for it but then there are all kinds of organizations you can consider locally different minority organizations and I don't only talk about ethnic minorities or religious minorities but different interest groups I don't know disability organizations this is all intercultural learning and what you can do with these partners you can do one of things you can do interventions training but you can do also projects in local communities so this service learning you can do international exchanges especially with the international organizations if you invest in it you can do a long-term multi-layer cooperation and that is particularly beneficial and the good news is that a lot of that cooperation can be funded through Erasmus plus funding on the international level I want to finish by a list a little list of resources you can probably later access this presentation and click on the links so there is the activities that I mentioned already there is another database of all kinds of non-formal methods from the youth sector, some publications on intercultural learning in general then there is another publication that focuses on primary school lesson plans on intercultural learning and a study focusing on intercultural competence of teachers so I finished by saying I recommend you to try to take these active steps it is fun it's beneficial for teachers as well not only for learners and don't hesitate to also approach me or other civil society organizations for help thank you. Excellent thank you so much Isabella it was really really interesting to listen and I hope that our teachers and non-teachers will be able to use this approach it was really great presentation and we'll go straight we'll move forward with our speakers Dennis and Smaranda if you're ready please start your presentation thank you. Hello everyone thank you Ina thank you Isabella for the very nice and extended presentation thanks to everyone for joining to this live webinar and also thanks to Ina and her team for the opportunity to take part in this on this occasion and to also introduce part of the of the work that the Romain Traveller's team of the Council of Europe is doing when it comes to social inclusion and inclusive education for Romain Traveller's children in particular now within our presentation we will focus on three aspects one will be focusing on the description of the in-school project and its intervention logic the second aspect will also focus and a little bit on the description of the main methodology which is used within the project and that is the index for inclusion a guide for school development led by inclusive values which was developed by Tony Booth and Mel Ainsko and finally we will share with you some insights on how the project and its methodology has been carried out at the school level I suppose this part will also be interesting very much to our audience now and for that purpose my colleagues Maranda which is in school facilitator from Romania will will help us and give us and share with us her experience with the work with the schools and within schools from Romania now a little bit about the project in school what what is in school in school stands for inclusive schools making a difference for Roma children which is a joint project of the European Union and the Council of Europe the general aim of the project is enhancing social inclusion of Roma by promoting inclusive education policies and practices in targeted countries now some of the object specific objectives of these projects which are particularly relevant for the local practice level are related to setting up support mechanism and resources for schools providing support to teacher to practice inclusive teaching some other objectives of the projects are related more on the policy side or to the institutional barriers and are related to supporting the removal of concrete barriers for vulnerable groups of children including through changes of legislation in target countries as well as raising awareness of the benefits of inclusive education for the general public as well for the decision makers now although the in school project has the duty to monitor the situation of Roma children among other categories of children which are living in vulnerable circumstances the project in itself does not target Roma children specifically but rather focuses on how the entire school population interacts interacts how the how the school what is the respect among each other the acknowledgement of each other and how the results are influencing sustainable and inclusive development now as suggested by the index for inclusion the interventions which are also supported within in school are mainly values based meaning that we focus on putting values into actions now we generally refer to this aspect of our work as being inclusive but not exclusive now a little bit about the project the project was initiated in 2017 with the pilot phase implemented in a specific cohort of schools until July 2019 now we are in a second phase of the project which was initiated in October 2019 now the current targeted countries under this phase of the project are Bulgaria the Czech Republic Hungary Slovakia and Romania now it is worth mentioning that it is a project working both on at the practice level meaning in a selected cohort of schools in each country and at the policy level which means in cooperation with relevant ministries and institution in charge and education each of these countries as well other relevant institutions within the education system now it's also it's also good to to portray how this project is connected with a larger setup of the Council of Europe meaning how is it connected to the larger policies in school is inscribed in the wider Council of Europe strategy on on social inclusion of Roma and travelers mainly the as a specific priority on quality inclusive education and training as part of the strategic action plan for Roma and travelers now the project also makes connections with the framework of competencies for democratic culture now this was also referred by Isabella in her previous in her previous presentation which is basically a set of many materials and guidance that can be used by education systems and institution to equip young people with the competencies that are needed to take to take action to promote to defend the human rights democracy in the rule of law and essentially to live in peaceful peaceful societies in peaceful and culturally diverse society as part of this larger landscape about the in school and the Council of Europe it is it is worth mentioning that inclusive education is among the main pillars monitored by the Council of Europe's monitoring bodies referring to European Commission against racism intolerance the framework on intervention for protection of national minorities and some others but also a close attention to this topic on inclusive education is given by the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights with this slide I'd like to present a little bit about the intervention logic of the project and what happens at the practice level meaning what happens at the level of the schools now since the beginning of the project in 2017 the the in school project has been working on the basis of the index for inclusion methodology which is a guide to school development led by inclusive values now that is a very flexible tool that allows schools to advance at their own pace define their own priorities depending of each local context need circumstances environments and so on now within the project we have involved around 31 schools and each of them follow the index development planning cycle in each school there there are similar but genuinely different processes which derive from the needs and vision for positive change in general from the school from the teachers from the students parents and other local or stakeholders which educational or interest group that are interested to on in the area of inclusive education or in education in general now to elaborate a little bit on the scheme which is presented with a slide here and how in school actually is being carried out at the level of the school the as a number one of this slide this is this represents the in school team of facilitators and educational advisors which support school through regular interventions and visits sometimes this is two or three visits and average sometimes less sometimes more depending on the stage of the implementation cycle but in school facilitators and advisors they also support and monitor the implementation of the index cycle they support the schools in building up the school development plans they support them in preparing the grant applications which are based on schools own priorities and needs which are defined or better called they are negotiating negotiated within the schools with each school there is so-called coordinating group established this is number two from the from the slide presented which involves teaching and not teaching staff pupils parents and other local stakeholders could be an NGO could be a representative of the municipal it is and so on now these coordinating groups reflect on their own they reflect on their needs the challenges and the opportunities within the school but in general they discuss and negotiate the change they want and need to bring within the school with the help of the proposed set of indicators and questions included in the index now the this coordinating groups they also define together the inclusive school development plans which sometimes can be a shortened document sometimes can be a long-term document or for several years and so on now based on the school development plans the team or the schools also engage in preparing grant applications which are developed by the schools comprising of activities in line with this inclusive approach or value value based approach the activities are then meant to support the positive change that schools and school environment would like to see or strive to and they are financially supported by the in school project through a grant now this is in brief the intervention logic of of in school which which follows the index development cycle my my colleagues Maranda will later present a bit of more specific what actually happens within the schools and share her experience from the school working with and within the schools in Romania now I mentioned at the beginning that that in school also works on the policy level so there is a continuous communication between what happens at the practice level and what happens at the policy level so we call this two-folded or dual approach which compels us to keep an overview of the education policy and practice in each country now to achieve this the in school facilitators work directly with the schools meaning with the teachers the students the school staff even with the parents and so on and on the other side in school advisors they ensure that the process is nationally coordinated meaning that they also pay attention and support the work within with the schools but at the same time they coordinate and maintain the systemic feedback communication with relevant policy um policy institutions now the slides portrays this this cartoon portrays a little bit of how we see and how the project communicates now to be more concrete we keep a close communication and cooperation with the ministries in charge of education in each of our of the countries where the project is being implemented now this communication is secured either through specifically established we call them national working groups which is the case for Hungary in Slovakia or through already existing policy coordination entities within the ministry themselves which is the case in in our case in in Romania and Czech Republic now the intention of this cooperation is to communicate about existing gaps and inconsistency between the policy and practices in schools but also to explore ways and opportunities in providing better support and better services to schools and the other way around the experiences and results from in schools project happen at the school level which happened at the school level are regularly communicated and they serve as the basis for the policy discussions with the ministry and this path portrayed in the cartoon slide um needs to portray these continuous and regular communication now i would like also to mention two very tangible achievements that we managed to to to succeed on the basis of the experience uh experiences from the pilot phase which is basically the in school um team from Romania have been successful at the policy level to support the development of the ministry of education methodology on school segregation monitoring in pre-university education now this methodology is now endorsed actually was endorsed at the end of 2019 by the ministry and is largely inspired and uses a wide range of indicators listed in the uh index for inclusion now currently we have a similar situation in Slovakia where there is an attempt of modifying the legal and policy framework for defining school segregation and the experiences of the in school project from the school school level from Slovakia are contributing to the ongoing debate and the policy discussion which are currently led by the ministry of um education in Slovakia we have mentioned that um the index is the main methodology that is followed and promoted under the in school project now i'd like to dedicate some time to promote this tool and approach as might be of benefit to today's audience and future viewers uh starting with the notion that uh that the schools are involved in many activities to promote um their development index helps to bring all these together into a single approach a single tree or a single flower petal which draws strength from its own roots now the materials within the in school within the index uh is um in the guide is structured in three dimensions for development of cultures policies and practices the dimension a which focuses on creating inclusive cultures focuses on the relationships which are deeply held values and beliefs changing culture is essential for sustaining development dimension b of the index focuses on producing inclusive policies which is related which is concerned with how the school is run and the plans um and the plans to to change to change it dimension three of the index focuses on involving evolving inclusive practices which are about what is learned and taught and how is learned and taught and each of this dimension has specific set of indicators here portrayed under a1 a2 v1 v2 c1 c2 and then the index in each of the indicators there is a a list of questions or critical questions which need to help um the practitioners teachers and everybody that is using the index to better refine and better develop their activities um to lead towards change um sustained and uh uh from the perspective of of sustainable development in education now the indicators are also the indicators and questions invite the reflections of what inclusive values imply for activity in all aspects of a school it's in environment and communities now together together with the questionnaires um these materials provide a future means to build on what is already mentioned as inclusion development plans um now i'd like to perhaps mention of how to how we can use um the index now one way of using the index is to start from a share commitment to put to put inclusive values into action something that we also promote and it's the core element of our interventions that leads toward development of a comprehensive and inclusive development plan produced or carried out in collaboration with all those within and around the school environment we have mentioned previously in the presentation that this coordinating groups involve the the the community within and outside of school so this could also involve people or institutions which are in the surrounding of the school environment but it's also interesting that the index it's it's very useful and it can also focus on a single aspect of a school or even the work of a single teacher now we invite the audience perhaps to access the uh um that the to access the the website of the um uh dedicated for the index for inclusion which is available here uh and perhaps to to test the usability and benefit by exploring the indicators and the question sections of the index in a single aspect of their work now i took this part um this this uh indicator just to make an illustration of of how this could be helpful uh and how this could be helpful for example each of the indicators or aspiration for development um it's clarified by question which tie down its meaning and provide ideas for development in this case presented in this slide is the indicator about children are encouraged to be confident and critical thinkers as you can see there is there are a list of questions that can help teachers and educational practitioners to to deeply reflect about an ongoing issue uh and perhaps even to expand as you can see the the the instrument or the the indicator um it's also um adaptable so basically you can show that you can add your own question there's no limit to the questions that you you you can ask and this is done with the purpose to improve their own work and transform um their actions into results which are bait and inclusive um values now at the end before i pass the floor to Maranda just very briefly i'd like to mention a couple of the results that we have been able to um conclude as part of the pilot phase of the project um meaning that the in-school approach was highly appreciated by schools and gave very positive results in school in all over the countries of implementation during the pilot phase we also have noticed a wider involvement of decision makers or stakeholders at the school level there was um evidently improved relationships among teachers and pupils and um there was um also improved uh there was improvement of the school premises the there was there were there was a certain level of um of um improvement of of the school environment in in order to make it more friendly and acceptable for for for children now uh a last thing that we also want to mention is that within this um within the pilot phase we also having experience improved teacher skills through targeted teaching training uh this on topics which the coordinating groups identified themselves allowing them to attend and to to participate in full staff teacher teacher training i will stop here and i'll take you thank you for your attention i am at disposal for any questions that you might have and i would like now to pass the floor to Maranda uh in order for her to share her experience from the project implementation school level in Romania thank you Dennis and good evening everyone i'm happy to participate in this webinar with you professionals who are open to find out about our project thank you Dennis for inviting me uh to all of you for being here and to Ina and Asi for the organization behind this meeting as you can see uh and now you have an overview of the implementation of the in school project in Romania in the pilot phase and I will continue to focus on the index cycle and how we have gone through it in the pilot phase in Romania six schools were involved and in the second implementation cycle three more schools so now we have nine uh inclusive schools in uh in Romania involved in uh in the in school project throughout the process as an in school facilitator in Romania my intervention involved direct work during the pilot phase with two schools and later during the second cycle of implementation with three schools a new schools was involved and uh while for one of the first two only methodological support I provided my intervention as facilitator was focused on acquiring the methodology proposed by the index of inclusion implementing it at the school level creating coordinating groups identifying with them priorities developing grant proposal proposals based on the needs identified and supporting the schools to implement the grant activities starting with May 2018 I provided regular support on average to revisit per month in each school as then it's already told you my objective was to assure quality inclusive education approach at every step of the process it means revising of the institutional development plans definition of priorities and activities conducting consultation with stakeholders and conducting activities supported through in school grants during the in school project schools institutional development plans and operational plans were effectively improved and revised through a participative method ensured by the index for inclusion methodology and at the end the two instruments became action plans of the schools for a longer period of time in Romania for five years per each school and the wider scope of action than the financial support provided by by in school related with the index process which then is told you about the first phase as you saw was starting the evaluation base based on the index that meant meant first establish and develop a coordination and planning group this group started as a group led by the principal of the school or by one of the young and very involved teacher and another five or 12 motivated teachers who wanted to get involved voluntarily and we started to discuss about significance of the index approach and to review the approaches to school development we clarified the common understanding of the terms and we started to analyze the indicators and questions in the index in my schools yeah as you can see my schools because I'm very attached to them the coordination group decided to work in a big group formed by 11 to 13 people for the next steps of the implementation of the project it was a proof of commitment and motivation because it took a lot of time of engagement in the second phase we have started together information about the school about the attitudes of different groups we organized small group discussions with teachers with students and some parents in this stage the parents were not so much involved some of our discussions continued in an informal space and were more relaxed and the teachers in particular developed the feeling of belonging to the group and began to exchange ideas with with each other well after this phase of consultation identifying priorities we moved to the next phase of the index cycle elaboration of a development plan for the level of school inclusion so the coordination group started to work with the index for inclusion and to identify index indicators correlated with their priorities in their schools this was the starting point to set a new framework for the school institutional development plan for the next five years where the priorities their priorities were included in the fourth phase implementation of priorities in educational practice well starting from this institutional development plan for five years they also develop an annual operational plan to meet the identified priorities for each year they develop a new operational plan to help them implement their priorities the consultation process was important because the the coordination group made a draft of the institutional development plan that was presented in the teachers council to all teachers who had the opportunity to complete with what they considered necessary in became their document and they attached themselves to their mission to transform the school into an inclusive school well about more about implementation in in one minute the last phase of the index process it referred to review the index process and continuing the index process in in this in the second cycle of the project for example one school decided to revise to totally revise the inclusion institutional development plan again and the new the new school involved in the project started the process from the from the beginning we are continuing in this moment the index process implementing priorities developing a new grant proposals a new grant proposals and we develop these grant proposals on the new needs identified and we are supporting the schools to implement the grant activities in the next in the next month well please to the next slide it's oh no it's okay this one it's perfect thank you thank you Dennis for helping me well related with activities implemented by schools through the in-school grants involved this activity is involved most of the teaching stuff and all of the student body including Roma children and also children with disabilities children from other minorities children in extreme poverty and children whose parents have migrated abroad all the three schools I work with reported having included Roma children and parents in their grant activities the Romanian team organized also national workshops with all the schools and peer-to-peer exchange exchange is study visits among schools a very important part of their activities was the training of teachers they're this training of trainings of teachers were conducted as part of the grant proposal and at least 20 teachers per school were trained in relevant areas ensuring the equation of the teaching stuff in terms of vision and understanding of of inclusion one of the main outcomes of in school has been visible at school governance level teaching and non-teaching stuff understand better the principle of inclusion apply them in their everyday work and relationship with children parents and co-workers are better are improved for example one of the school reported an increase in parents involvement in school activities one immediate result as I told you it was the improvement of the interpersonal relations among teachers between teachers and their students between students and between I don't know the school as a whole and their parents the activities that require constant consultations with all these educational state callers are more visible and they are implemented in a friendly environment the improvement of the schooling environment had the direct impact on reducing for example absenteeism of Roma children on the involvement of Roma students in regular extracurricular activities improve also I don't know the teachers became more aware of the non-discriminatory attitude towards students and parents in school it turned out to be a project about healthy relationships between all all these stakeholders how do they build these relationships through training courses and mentoring students were challenged to help each other to do better in schools they clearly defined goals accompanied by many other acquisitions that cannot be quantified in numbers but only observed as a result of this mentoring relationships during the meetings with the parents and within the teachers council moments from the developed themes were exemplified and the progress of the students involved in the project was discussed images from the activities as you can see some pictures and material resources were followed it is observed as a result of the involvement in this project a better functioning of the relationships between between people and if it's possible to move to the next slide okay in my activity as facilitator together with the teachers with the parents and with the students we realized that it was for all of us about experiential learning and above all about being together in unity we realized how important it is to know the history of a minority to be able to empathize with their pain and suffering to be happy for their achievements in the end we set together the tone for the relationships between people and we understood how important it is to all speak the same language to treat everyone correctly regardless of the ethnicity i don't know religion skin colors meaning in fact to treat ourselves ourselves properly and to respect and love each other i learned success stories with them from which i learned that ambition perseverance hard work can move the mountains and actually we realized together that we have a major major mission to support children from national minorities in achieving the proposed the proposed ideas because many of them do not have enough confidence in their own strengths that one day they can become what they want and i will wait for your questions if we have now or later because you'll have my email address and we are ready to okay to thank you for your attention together with deniz excellent thank you so much maranda thank you so much deniz for such a great introduction of the project and also the insights that you've shared it was very interesting so as we are already actually running a bit out of time but we'll still try to address a couple of questions that has been posed during the presentations one question is um could you perhaps give an example of what what is used for online training because right now obviously it's extremely important to know the exact tools that you've been using so far thank you so of course there is different things that you can consider as online training for teachers and different things as online learning for pupils but i think i can imagine that the pupils is the the bigger concern right now and i think what is what is beautiful right now is that with the remote learning that schools are in experiencing locally it becomes a norm for pupils to to interact through the screen and that opens a possibility of interaction through the screen also with with their peers elsewhere so what you can do you can you can have virtual encounters between classrooms in different countries and here again i recommend e-tweening as as a tool to use to to facilitate those it can be course run together but it can be also just exchange and dialogue of course if it's if it's framed well by the teachers and then of course there are there are specific modules that you can run with pupils online as well on specific topics related to intercultural learning yeah so this could be a longer topic which i don't have time to go into excellent thank you so much Isabella and we have one more question regarding the in-school project some people were wondering whether the school can join or apply for the project could you please daniel since maranda explain if that can work thank you inna and thank you for the question for the moment we are operational in four countries and the second phase is already running we might be expanding the cohort of schools within the countries i think in romania and check republic and possibly slovakia for the school years however we are working on extending the project and hopefully with the next school year from 2021 perhaps we can even extend the number of the countries the targeted countries so perhaps in that regards we can also include additional countries and school within the project however we have shared our contacts so anyone that is interested about participating learning from our experiences or sharing some of the educational materials and tools they are very well welcomed to contact us and we will be happy to to share some of these findings with anyone that is interested thank you excellent thank you so much so i want to thank everyone who participated in this webinar a special thanks to our speakers unfortunately we don't have more time to elaborate more on the questions it was really really inspiring very interesting thank you so much for sharing the the approach that you have been implementing so far so we will draw this webinar to the end and i would like to point out one practical question that is very important for the audience yes you will be able to obtain the certificate of participation what needs to be done to to receive the certificate so first of all you can submit the evaluation form within 24 hours and we will leave the link as an announcement in the question and answer box please make sure to save the link so it does not disappear when the webinar is over please make sure to also be registered on the teacher academy school education gateway account and be logged in this is very important so this is how you'll be able to receive certificate once you submit the evaluation form so once again please make sure to save the link that we have just published in the question and answer box yes this is this was the practical information and also next actually this week we will continue the talks on a social inclusion we'll have another webinar which you are very very welcome to participate in webinar will be indicators for inclusive systems in and around schools so please join us this friday we'll be very happy to see you there so once again thank you so much thank you so much to to Isabella, Dennis and Smaranda it was really great and very inspiring thank you so much to our audience to be with us today and i wish you a wonderful evening and a great rest of the week thank you and goodbye