Lithuanian’s student‘s review about the international Project „Global Warming“ and students‘ from Denmark and Finland visit in Šilute and M. Jankus basic school

May 1-7, 2011 we had group of students and their teachers from Finland and Denmark at our school . They are participants of the Project „Global Warming“.

Ieva Kuzaite, 8th grade student, shares her experience

Everything started 1st May…

On Sunday Lithuanians gathered near the school and went to airport of Palanga to meet Danes. Our students had taken the guitars and played all the way.

When arrived to the airport in a few minutes we saw the group of old friends. There were passed just two weeks (we visit Danes 8-16 April) but we missed each other and looked forward to our meeting. After kisses and wishes we showed to the guests Palanga, our resort of Lithuania. Palanga relaxed all and tiredness after the trip disappeared.

When came back to Silute all gathered at Greta’s place, watched a film and impatiently waited for Finns. At eleven look round the school for their bus. We weren‘t acquainted but the acquaintance was short because of late evening. So Lithuanians put guests up at their homes.

On Monday morning we met at school hall. The headmaster presented our school, told us about aims and visions of the work. Later we played games helping to learn more about each other. We were given some home task for Friday evening. Lithuanians showed the classrooms and the museum. After lunch we went to Fridrichas Bajoraitis local library. During the lecture the librarians Vita Geruliene and Dalia Pupšyte presented Lithuania and old Šilute. After the lecture we had dinner at Silute Tourism and Services business school.

On Tuesday we got up early and visited Ornithological station in Ventes Ragas. The ornithologist Vytautas Jusys told us about ringing birds and their migration. We were allowed to ring a few birds. In different rooms we heard voices of birds and it took a few minutes to understand that the ornithologist Vytautas made this sound himself. „ – In this way we attract birds to take some photos“- he says. After that we visited Silute municipality, Hugo Sojus estate and Silute museum. In the afternoon children had free time and some of them went to Klaipeda.

On Wednesday at first we worked at school with MOI, wrote thoughts about the first days together. Later went to Silute Peatbog Enterprise. We listened a lecture about peat exploitations, mining, restorative works of ecosystem and were taken to the peat digging areas to watch the process of mining.

While the trip to Norkaiciai forest the weather cooled and some of us felt a bit chilly. There were met by the representatives of State Forests. They showed us the premises for seeds extraction, nursery garden and told us how much work young tree demands to grow it into a big tree.

On Thursday we went to Rambynas Regional Park. Our guide was the ecologist of Rambynas Regional Park Drasutis Brazauskas. He took us to Witches Fir called The Big Fir .The tree is really amazing. We also visited beavers’ dams. We were too noisy and maybe frightened all beavers…From the Mound of Sereitlaukis the view are really gorgeous. You are able to admire the meadows of the Nemunas. The storks’ colony in Bitenai impressed not only Danes who have few storks in their country, but Finns as well. At school we were given a task – to count all the steps to Rambynas hill. Answers varied…We had dinner in the campsite „Sena Giria“. In the evening Lithuanians showed the town to the guests.

The last day of visit students gathered in biology room and made the final work – origami Swan. The teacher of technology Laura Martinkiene helped us. We bent one large swan with flags of three countries on it for the school museum. Two smaller swans will adorn Danes and Finns ‘schools.

In the evening we had the farewell party. Lithuanians stated the evening –sang songs, played the guitars. Later students had to present their homework- all were divided into groups and each group had to act episodes of different theme.

Later the families said good bye to newly gained members and in early morning our guests left. We are looking forward to seeing them next year.

The students and teachers of the project want to say a big thank for help to:

Food of Kretinga

Silute Peatbog Enterprise

Silute Tourism and Services business school

Rambynas Regional Park and the ecologist of Rambynas Regional Park Drasutis Brazauskas

F. Bajoraitis Local Library

The representatives of Silute State Forests

Ornithological station in Ventes Ragas and the ornithologist Vytautas Jusys

Silute municipality

Hugo Sojus estate

Silute museum

The technology teacher Laura Martinkiene

And all who helped us that week

The working group of the Project „Global warming“

M. Jankus basic school

Future Plans

school year	hosting two	hosting one	hosting free	theme
2009-2010	FI	DK	LT	CLIMATE CHANGE: Small Things – Big Issues
2010-2011	LT	DK	FI	ENDANGERED SPECIES: Rich in Diversity
2011-2012	FI	LT	DK	FOOD:
2012-2013	DK	FI	LT	DK suggests January 2012
2013-2014	DK	LIT	FIN	DK suggest January 2013
2014-2015	LT	FIN	DK	LT suggests January 2014
2015-2016	FI	DK	LT	FI suggests January 2015
2016-2017	DK	LT	FI	DK suggests January 2016
2017-2018	LT	FI	DK	LT suggests January 2017
2018-2019	FI	DK	LT	FI suggests January 2018
2019-2020	DK	LT	FI	DK suggests January 2019
2020-2021	LT	FI	DK	LT suggests January 2020

In this plan there are two consecutive years for Denmark to host both countries but still this is a fair way of everyone to have their hosting free year once in three years. And after six years we have all hosted the big group twice. Let me know if you come up with ideas to make this better, it is a tricky task to plan the visits fairly since we have three countries involved in the project. I have tried to keep the hosting free year in the same order LT-FI-DK and start from that.

My suggestion is that the country who is going to have the bigger hosting reponsibility next year could suggest a topic, because they will also have to come up with places to visit for the other two groups. If the country who is hosting both doesn’t have any suggestions, then it could be the other hosting country (for the next yeat) that makes the original suggestion. Then we could all discuss about the topic, but it needs to be decided already in January the same year that the project is going to start. I will have to turn in the application March 1st, so I will write the application in February.

Once I started making the table I couldn’t stop, and also people have been asking me how does this even out in the end, so I planned far in the future, but I tried to keep it fair all the way through, so that if for example 2015 we feel that we don’t want to continue working together, it has been fair all the way through. However, the schedule does go in intervals of three years. I will open a new blog page like this for each school year and I will link them to each other. I hope you will all write posts here to share your thoughts about everything we do. If Nordplus Junior decides not to give us funding anymore, we can always decide to do something else, but still continue working together. Our cooperation is such a good one that I think we should try our best to keep it.

Coping with Foreign Cultures

All in all our trip to Lithuania went really well. Taking a minibus and a ferry down to Siluté was a good idea, it wasn’t very expensive and it was also environmentally friendly. The program we had in Siluté was also very good and I think it could be the same every year we visit also because we will have different students every year.

To our surprise we noticed that for students and their parents traveling to Lithuania is not the same as traveling to Denmark. Students are so young and inexperienced in traveling that they are biased and tend to judge things they don’t know. In this respect traveling to a lesser known country and seeing what it is like makes them more tolenrant and ready to face new situations and people that are unlike themselves. Wanting to travel to a country in order to know its people and culture should be our first goal, and this we should try to prepare our students for. Global Education Course does not arrange tourist trips to foreign countries and we teachers are not tourist guides and the host families are not hotel personnell. We should try to prepare our students for that and emphasize the fact that if you are not willing to understand the culture of the hostfamily maybe you shouldn’t travel at all. I’m sure most of the students would still like to travel but they would be better prepared to face the differences if we talked about it in advance.

In a trip like ours the students have four different levels to work with in coping with the different situations:

1. his/her inner world: how am I feeling today?
2. his/her own language group: how do we Finns get along with each other?
3. his/her Lithuanian & Danish peers: how do I get along with the Lithuanians and the Danes?
4. his/her surroundings: I’m supposed to learn about environmental issues, how does this what we’re doing now help me understand the nature?

I’m sorry to say that this year some of our students didn’t get past even the first level – they didn’t want to travel because they would in general prefer to stay in a hotel than in other people’s homes. Most of our students didn’t get past the second level, they didn’t feel at ease with other language groups and they wanted to stay together with their Finnish friends all week, even to the extent that they pretended not to understand the instructions when they were told to work in mixed groups or they provided excuses why they weren’t doing that. In our remaining classes this spring we will discuss this with the students and Titta has drafted a self-assessment form for the students to reflect upon their behaviour.

Even though this year we encountered more problems in adjusting to traveling, we can still happily conclude that there were a handful of students who managed to pass all the way to the fourth level and did adjust to the Lithuanian culture, wanted to get to know the people and see how the live. They spent all their free time with their Lithuanian and Danish friends and didn’t sit all week sulking in their rooms. They managed to get life long experiences and understand something more than they ever could by just sitting in a classroom. Some girls were crying in the bus for a long time after we left Siluté and have volunteered to host next year also even though they will not be students in our school anymore.

All and all, I can just conclude that we have a very good cooperation going here and it is wonderful to be able to provide our students with expriences like this. As we teachers get more experienced in planning everything we do, we can also make even more students ready to accept the differences in other cultures.

Greetings from Lithuania!

Finally we are all here in Silute Lithuania – teachers and students from Porvoo, Finland and Sönderborg Denmark together with our local peers and colleagues. Here’s the program of this week:

It’s been wonderful so far, two more days to enjoy the warm hospitality of our Lithuanian friends. You can read all about it in our students’ blog MOI. Here are a few photos for you to enjoy:

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Planning our visit to Lithuania

Working with our Rich in Diversity theme with the 16 girls in the Global Education course this year has gone really well. We have written Introductions and Hot Spot – articles, made some videos and now the paintings are well on the way. The only thing I regret is that we haven’t had a chance to communicate with the Danish and the Lithuanian partners because we’ve been so involved in our own tasks. As soon as the paintings are ready and photographed, we will comment on all the articles in our web magazine Moi

We have started to plan our trip to Lithuania and everyone is really excited. Three girls decided not to travel, but the rest of us have now rented a bus, hired a bus driver and set up a mailing list for everyone who’s traveling. We will start our journey May 1st and come back May 7th. It will be wonderful to see Lithuania in the spring. We are hoping to see the sea shore – maybe spend a whole day there – and learn as much as we can about Lithuania. Only our art teacher has been there, no one else has. We have found out that we need to exchange our euros to litas, and that it takes about nine hours to drive down from Estonia. We are really hoping to learn some Lithuanian also. Rich in Diversity – that is the case also in languages. We also really looking forward to seeing our Danish friends in Silute. What a wonderful reunion – can’t wait!

Rich in Diversity

We have now been working with our biodiversity theme for three months and it’s time to report what we have done so far and what we plan to do in the future.

Titta, Elina and I met in August and decided to call this year’s project ‘Rich in Diversity’,we talked about how it could mean the diversity in plants, animals, and other phenomena in nature, but also in humans, cultures and languages. That is why I we told our students to take photos of their hands and include them in their introductions. We are very much hoping to find an introduction of all Lithuanian and Danish students in www.ejournal.fi/moi I hope our partners have time to write them. We will be commenting on their articles very soon.

After writing the introductions our students have been studying Biodiversity and Nature Protection. One Friday afternoon we went for a walk in the near by fields and forests and counted the number of species in a random area of one square meter to find out differences. You can watch the video we made in www.ejournal.fi/moi in the videos – folder.

This week we will start writing articles about hotspots in the world. www.biodiversityhotspots.org

At the end of November Titta is going to start making paintings with the students. The paintings will be photographed and uploaded in www.ejournal.fi/moi before Christmas, or in January at the latest.

The plans for the spring are still a bit open but one thought is to look at Nature Protection more closely.