So, what have we learned?

March 25, 2020

In concrete terms, we have two major outputs: this blog and our lesson plans. We aimed for the blog to create a record of our progress, as the entire goal of the project was to develop a blueprint to help smooth over international communication in the future. As we might have expected, there were some bumps along the way; every team, of course, had other things on their to-do list throughout the project’s duration, so there were times when we weren’t able to publish quite as often as we would have liked. Overall, though, someone reading through the entire blog would come out with a solid understanding of what we accomplished and what we learned as we worked together to develop the lesson plans. 

The lesson plans are another thing that we hope others can benefit from in the future, and we hope to share them online sometime in the near future, but the process of developing them has given us far more than just the lesson plans themselves. We now have domestic and international piloting data from each of the four countries involved — the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. Not only did the piloting process optimize the lesson plans for use both domestically and internationally, but it has also given us information that will be useful when developing material in the future, even with different teams from different countries. 

Moving away from data and the material that we created, though, it would be remiss not to mention the lasting partnerships we’ve built, the ways that each team has developed, and the ways that our piloting teachers also benefited from taking part in the project. Several of the teams will continue to work together in the future, and it’s been particularly encouraging to watch the Czech and Slovak CTG and ITG teams — which were fairly new at the beginning of the project — develop right alongside the project itself. 

ESSR was always meant as a bridge to more international work in the future, so you will not be surprised to hear that that’s exactly how we’re using it. We already have plans in place to start the next project, which will focus on blending history and citizenship education. If you’ve enjoyed or somehow learned from following us here, we hope you’ll continue to check in on where we go next.