Going to school on Saturdays is a strange idea for many students as well as for the teachers. However, on Saturday the 24.11.2018, the annual Open Day was held by the Bettina-von-Arnim-Gymnasium, where children in the fourth grade are about to decide which secondary school they are going to choose, and their parents were given the opportunity to collect knowledge about the selection of the different subjects. The content of the subjects was provided playfully to the children through creative activities and exercises as well as experiments in the scientific subjects as chemistry or physics. Furthermore, the general conditions and different social but also creative and athletic activities that are offered at our school were shown to the visitors.
Our Erasmus club (7 to 9 grade) also participated to share the idea “diversity in unity” and to inform interested visitors about the participating countries ( Germany, Italy, France and Spain). We explained to them that we are using different interactive and creative methods as playing games, or creating short films in order to get to know the similarities and differences of European cultures and the importance of multiculturalism and acceptance of other cultural backgrounds. To emphasize our support for the cultural solidarity and the aims of the project, which are the inclusion of migrants and breaking negative stereotypes and the discrimination by spreading the feeling of unity, we created colorful posters and signs that clarified positive characteristics of Europe, but also exposed negative aspects and encouraged possible improvements. At our Erasmus stand we offered various types of self-made snacks such as typical German Christmas cookies or cakes and organized a quiz to check out how much the visitors and also teachers know about Europe in general, but especially about our project “TogEUther”. Our selection of biscuits was well received by the guests and our quiz caused a lot of laughter even though not all questions were answered correctly. We had a lot of fun presenting our results to the visitors and punctuating the importance of a cultural interaction with European friends and exchange partners in the present-time context of the globalization process. Our Open Day was very successful and we hope that we have achieved attention for our project and generated a feeling of togetherness.