Awards for work in the public interest

Three P-seminar projects from Lower Franconian grammar schools were presented with the TaC Award in early October at the well-attended conference of the Professional School of Education (PSE) at the University of Würzburg. The pupils involved demonstrated a particularly strong commitment to the common good and showed how various societal challenges can be overcome. The groups from the winning schools received their prizes in front of a large audience.

Workshops against online hate and racism

First prize was won by the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Gymnasium in Schweinfurt for its project ‘#mitcouragegegenhassimnetz’. The pupils developed a peer-coaching workshop for Year 5 pupils at their school, which addresses and reflects on how to deal with hate and racism online. To this end, the participants in the P-seminar programmed a digital decision-making game that places the younger pupils in the role of a class representative who must deal with racist content shared in the class chat. “The seminar impressed the jury with its academic approach, the comprehensive workshop materials, the peer-coaching approach, the project’s lasting impact, and the choice of a highly topical and important subject,” the citation stated.

Inclusive listening

The Matthias-Grünewald-Gymnasium in Würzburg was awarded second prize for the project ‘Easy Language 2.0 – Simply Listen’. Together with residents of Arche gGmbH in Würzburg, the pupils produced an audiobook in easy-to-read language. It features animal and crime stories, which were narrated by the pupils and accompanied by background sounds produced by the residents of ‘Die Arche’. This not only resulted in a product that promotes inclusion through easy-to-read language; but through the collaboration with ‘Die Arche’, inclusion was also put into practice to a significant degree within the project itself. The residents of ‘Die Arche’ took on the role of experts, as they checked the resulting texts for clarity through several rounds of proofreading.

Urban Gardening

Third prize went to the ‘Urban Gardening’ P-seminar from the Olympia-Morata-Gymnasium in Schweinfurt. Throughout the school year, the pupils planned and managed the gardening season in the Olympia-Morata-Gymnasium’s publicly accessible school garden. In doing so, they applied planting methods particularly suited to urban areas: hydroponics, terrabioponics, as well as mobile and vertical gardening. They also created a flower strip to promote biodiversity in the garden. Furthermore, the P-seminar organised two project days for Year 6 pupils. The aim was to raise the younger pupils’ awareness of the importance of nature and sustainability. This was achieved through joint planting and harvesting activities, as well as by building birdhouses and making fat balls. The project thus has two societal impacts: an ecological one, through the promotion of biodiversity in the school garden, and a social one, through sharing a love of nature and creating a publicly accessible space for relaxation and socialising.

The TaC Award

The TaC Award is presented by the University of Würzburg and the Office of the "Ministerialbeauftragten für die Gymnasien in Unterfranken" (Ministerial Representative for Grammar Schools in Lower Franconia). It was developed as part of the ‘Teachers as Changemakers (TaC)’ project, a joint initiative between the Universities of Würzburg and Bamberg. This marks the third time the awards have been presented at the PSE’s autumn conference, which this year was held under the theme ‘Understanding conspicuous behaviour – promoting pupils’ health’. Clearly, the conference planning team had struck a chord with many teachers, as a new record was set with 450 participants.

The “Teachers as Changemakers” project

In this project, trainee teachers are trained to become advocates of the action-oriented approach known as ‘Social Entrepreneurship Education’. The project aims to help embed Social Entrepreneurship Education more firmly in schools and teacher training as a methodological and didactic approach to learning processes, thereby helping to prepare young people for the social and environmental challenges of the future. “Pupils learn in this way that they can actively help shape their own world and bring about change, even on a small scale,” says Dr Korinna Thiem, who is overseeing the project at the University of Würzburg’s Centre for Research and Technology Transfer. Engaging with social entrepreneurial thinking and action does not necessarily have to lead to the establishment of a pupil-run company. Rather, it is about developing and implementing ideas that can help tackle environmental and social challenges.

Social Entrepreneurship Education not only strengthens understanding of sustainability, social justice and social engagement. The approach also fosters important future-oriented and personal skills such as creativity, personal responsibility, critical thinking and the ability to develop solutions collaboratively. “For schools, this means creating learning environments in which young people experience a sense of self-efficacy, take on responsibility and learn to deal openly with change,” explains Maja Freymuth, a project officer at the Professional School of Education at the University of Würzburg.

At the University of Würzburg, the Start-up Support programme at the Centre for Research and Technology Transfer and the Professional School of Education are involved in the project. They regularly organise events on integrating Social Entrepreneurship Education into the classroom, such as the lecture series ‘Teaching for Impact’. Those interested can find out there how the lessons of tomorrow can be designed using the social entrepreneurship education approach.

Further information

Information on the winning projects

The “Teachers as Changemakers” project

Contact

Maja Freymuth, project assistant, maja.freymuth@uni-wuerzburg.de