Report on the Comenius meeting at Alfred-Delp-Realschule Niederkassel, Germany (March 22-24, 2010)

Participants: From the Perez de Ayala school in Oviedo in Spain there were Juan Carlos Tascon and his students Manuela García Faggiani and Yasmine Alonso Sánchez.From Brookfield Community School and Language College in Southampton there were Kevin Staniland, Alison Ledger and their students Jake Lawrie-Ashton, Chloe Spencer und Katy Malcolm.From AOC Groene Welle in Zwolle there were Ilse Dullemond, Hermien Gelincnk and their students Anouk Jansen and Margotje Kiekenbos. .From Alfred-Delp-Realschule Niederkassel there was the complete Comenius group consisting of 15 teachers (Dorothee Wihler, Head Teacher), Ingrid Schnickers–Both, Deputy Head ,Stanka Bos, Günther Haas, Monika Hefekäuser, Jutta Lützenkirchen, Dennis Neitzel, Martina Nimz, Cordia Oudehengel, Kathy Schäfer, Jutta Schmidt-Theile, Ulla Schulz-Telschow, Anke Voß, Verena Werner and Sandra Wilke) and our students Kim Messinger, Lea Lülsdorf, Jonas Lülsdorf, Tamara Pütz, Melissa Alaca, Vanessa Huppas, Angelina Seib and Muskaan Khanna.

Again we all agreed that we had a very productive and enlightening meeting. We had a great time together and were able to exchange ideas and topics for our next projects as well as insights of each others’ schools and countries.

Most impressive were the students’ presentations of their schools including the carbon footprints as results of their project. The students’ ideas of how to improve their footprints were inspirational for finding new topics to work on in the future.

We had an active discussion while formulating tasks for activities and projects to be presented on the next meeting in Spain. Our final decision was:

1. Every country works on the question “Where does our energy come from?” and presents their findings. We agreed on keeping the findings regional, not looking at the whole country.

2. In addition two energy sources should be presented by each country, mentioning also their pros and cons. We found it helpful to decide on the different sources in the meeting, so that there won’t be any overlapping:Britain: geothermal energy, rubbish incineratorNetherlands: wind energy, gasSpain: coal, water energyGermany: solar energy, nuclear energyWe also agreed to leave the forms of presentations up to each country.

3. It was suggested to do an evaluation of the first year in this Comenius project and to talk about the question how to go on in the local Comenius groups, so that an exchange on these topics is possible in Spain.Ideas for future activities: eco project day, “what do we do in the curriculum?”, carbon footprint looking at food or clothes/shoes, being creative/pieces of art, composing a motivation song (one verse per country), collecting waste (making art or a video out of it), planting trees…..

Besides working in the meeting we found out about the various cultural and ecological aspects of the Rhineland and its cities Bonn and Cologne by exploring them and the Kottenforst ( a beautiful wood in the area) on foot.

The students had a memorable und amazing time in their host families as well as while going out together for bowling or having a barbecue.

Being that inspired we all are looking forward to seeing each other again in May heading for Oviedo/Spain.