- aims of the project
- enriching and diversifying the methods of teaching used in secondary schools;
- permanent cooperation with schools in systematic transmission of humanistic and European issues;
- help in preparing young people to study politology, history, international relations, German philology, journalism;
- developing the ability to work with source material, to edit and analyse materials linguistically, historically and politically;
- arousing young people’s interest in the history of the region and Europe.
Project options. Programme.
- Interdisciplinary cycles
A cycle of several all-day meetings when students focus on curricular issues from Polish, History, Social Studies, German. Below, an example of an interdisciplinary cycle in one thematic sequence:
Subject Topic
1 Introduction Krzyżowa – a place bursting with history.
2 History The Polish People’s Republic in the 1980s.
3 Polish The real truth of Barańczak – how to expose newspeak.
4 Social Studies Conformism, collaboration or struggle? Attitude to the system.
5 German In der Wahrheit leben - Ausstellung. Übungen mit dem Wortschatz.
6 Polish How are stereotypes formed? Polish-German relations in samizdat press.
The classes are enriched with activating methods, such as project, work with source materials, discussion or Oxford debate. The classes are conducted by school teachers and teachers from the foundation. They can use lesson plans based on underground publications and multimedia presentations.
- Three-year course
The project assumes doing one subject in blocks of lessons. The syllabus is designed for three-year education. Below, examples of topics for Polish lessons:
Year 1:
- medieval architecture of sacral and functional buildings
- the notion of censorship and the freedom of the media
- the Middle Ages and the 20th-century documents (based on the collection of the KARTA Centre)
Year 2:
- The language of exhibitions and publications. Work with source materials.
- Popular today, popular in the underground. A journalist and a philosopher.
- Polish and German Romanticism.
Year 3:
- factual evidence of the catastrophy and an individual in the face of values.
- Literature serving politics. The doctrine of social realism.
- Literature in the marshal law period
Thanks to this method, it is easier for the students to acquire knowledge, group it accordingly and place within a framework. At the same time, they think analytically and use source materials. This system is perfect when preparing for the oral part of the school-leaving exam (Nowa Matura).
- Journalist workshop
The classes will take place twice a month in the evenings. The students will gain practical and theoretical knowledge about journalism. The workshops will be based on the materials of the KARTA Centre. The final outcome of the course will be a publication containing the description of the archive of underground publishers and a simulation of a press conference about the Krzyżowa Foundation. The participants of the project will have a chance to meet with the journalists of the most popular Polish daily and with the representatives of the local media.
- One-day meetings in the Historic Site.
The meetings are five-hour classes taught by the Krzyżowa Foundation teachers on the following topics:
1. ‘Underground publications as freedom’ – classes based on multimedia resources of the ‘Rejecting Lie’ exhibition and samizdat publications.
2. ‘Holocaust’ – Lower Silesia is a region where more than 100 branches of the Gross Rosen concentration camp were situated. In these classes the students find out about the mechanism of the ‘final solution’.
3. ‘German opposition against Nazism’ – few young people know that the Germans also fought against Hitler. Thanks to these classes the students learn the history of the Kreisau Circle and the White Rose.
4. ‘An Outline of Polish-German relations’ – classes on the newest history and German language.
Introduction
‘School in Krzyżowa’ is an innovatory project which combines so valued nowadays interdisciplinary nature of classes with the atractiveness of their form. The centre of the Krzyżowa Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe is a perfect place for carrying out classes for young people. This place is full of history; an opposition movement against Nazism operated here, and the symbolic for Polish-German relations Mass of Reconciliation took place here.
The project is directed to lower-secondary school students. It is based on the potential of the Krzyżowa Foundation centre for teaching history, geography, Polish, German. The classes are enriched with humanistic content connected with the idea of ‘Krzyżowa’ – a meeting and dialogue place. The teachers and students participating in the ‘School in Krzyżowa’ project use study aids provided by the Foundation: the permanent exhibition of opposition against Nazism and communism in Europe, a thorough multimedia archive of, among others, Communist party members’ speeches, newsreels or ready-made lectures on the newest history of Poland and Europe. We also have a well-stocked library, an archive of samizdat publications, ready-made lesson plans. Thanks to this project, the students may not only creatively experience history or art, but also meet peers from other European countries. The teachers may carry out lessons within their subject’s curriculum.
1) Aims of the project.
- enriching the content of the curriculum;
- widening both the student’s and the teacher’s perspectives – showing the student various ways of finding information about the world;
- inspiring the students to make an individual effort to gain knowledge;
- promoting tolerance of the difference of other nations;
- changing the area of action – creating new space which may be used by the group: several rooms, a computer room, an exhibition room, library, the green belt offer various possibilities of their creative use;
- enriching and differentiating the teaching methods used in lower-secondary schools.
2) Programme
The programme can be used in lower-secondary schools as an intercurricular element. The basic unit of the programme is an issue: the teacher focuses on a given topic using the excellent base of the Krzyżowa Foundation.
The school teachers and the teachers from the Krzyżowa Foundation introduce methods which involve the group in an optimal way and which cannot be used in schools, e.g.: individual work with source materials, interviews, meetings with interesting people, field exercises. The students have an opportunity to experience history in a creative way and to meet peers from other European countries.
3) Experience
In the 2005/2006 school year, students from Gimnazjum (lower-secondary school) nr 2 took part in the ‘School in Krzyżowa’ educational project. The project was carried out by history, Polish language, German language and geography teachers. Examples of intracurricular issues:
Polish language: ‘I’ communicates. I express my opinions on an issue in a convincing way, without aggression. Names speak for themselves. Important mark. Etymology of word. Self-portait of the Polish people. Stage adaptation of an important moment in Polish history: christening of Poland.
History: My neighbourhood – my community. Emergence of Poland in the 10th century. The countryside and the town in the period of regional disintegration in Poland.
Geography: Trip to the countryside. Making a sketch of the terrain considering azimuths, measuring distance, marking a route on a map. Using the land, making a map of how the land in Krzyzowa is used.
German language: Practical usage of German. Learning vocabulary connected with the content of other subjects.
Various facilities of the centre in Krzyżowa were used in carrying out the project: the computer room, the art room (clay modelling), multimedia presentations based on the collection of the Foundation. The classes took place in the Palace and in the House on the Hill.
A stage adaptation was prepared, which will be shown in the 2006/2007 school year. The classes were documented with photographs, maps and descriptions.
I LO in Świdnica
II LO in Świdnica
Zespół Szkół Mechanicznych w Świdnicy
Gimnazjum nr 2 in Świdnica
Gimnazjum nr 3 in Świdnica
Gimnazjum in Pszenno
Zespół Szkół Rolnicze Centrum Kształcenia Ustawicznego in Mokrzeszów
- How are stereotypes formed? Polish-German relations in samizdat press.
- The real truth of Barańczak – how to expose newspeak.
- Popular today, popular in the underground. A journalist and a philosopher.
- Literature serving politics. The doctrine of social realism.
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