Posted on 24 October 2017
The first student exchange of the Erasmus+ project ‘Living (in) Europe – Europa: ti vedo, ti vivo’ united high school students from Italy, Romania, Spain, Greece and France in Florence during a two week workshop and brought them to the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) in Florence on 13 and 16 October 2017.
The three year project aims to improve understanding of European citizenship by inviting students to examine both modern and contemporary European history, in particular key events that shaped the European Union. The project is managed by the High school “Peano” of Florence, and benefits from the partnership with the HAEU and the Opera di Santa Croce.
Seven high schools are taking part in student mobility, three from Florence and one each from Greece, Romania, Spain and France. In the first year of the programme, teachers took part in seminars in order to delve into EU history themselves, experiment innovative teaching methodologies, as well as prepare them for the student exchanges in the following years, of which the first one just took place.
Throughout this scheme, students not only learn about the establishment of the European Union but also investigate its key values: secularism, dialogue, peace, freedom, equality, solidarity and democracy.
At the HAEU, students analyzed archival documents pertaining to four Italian key figures in European Union history: Alcide De Gaspiri, Altiero Spinelli, Mario Draghi and Romano Prodi. The documents not only helped to increase their knowledge of leading figures in European integration, but also to better understand the origins of the EU’s key values. The goal of the project is to get young people engaged in imagining a European citizenship as being part of a cultural European community.
Andra Zlotu, one of the participants from Romania, says about her experience in this Erasmus project: “It was amazing. Although I knew some things about Europe from my history classes, I learned a lot of new things especially about Europe from other peoples’ cultures.”
Another participant from Italy, Carrie Zheng echoed Andra’s thoughts: “I think the Erasmus+ project is a pretty innovative project because it’s the first time for me meeting a lot of people from other countries and it’s good to learn about their cultures.”
The ability to work together and benefit from students from different cultures is also what stood out to Sophia Kitsou, one of the participating teachers from Greece. “It went really well because the students have a way of connecting with each other. I thought it would be hard at first, speaking a foreign language and explaining all the terms in English, but it went very well. I think the Erasmus+ project gives these students an opportunity to find things out about each other, that unite them and unite us all as Europeans,” she says.