Hello friends,
between 14 and 20 November the third exchange of our project took place in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, hosted by “Romain Rolland” Foreign Language School. The theme the participants worked on was “Empathy and Leadership”. The week was filled with a lot of work, experiences and positive emotions, and you will be able to see the result a little later on our website and on our Youtube channel.Before the visit in Stara Zagora, the students had to get tuned into the topic of Empathy and Leadership by working on a preliminary assignment. Here is the assignment itself:
Video assignment
Our students knew they would be working in international groups to create short films on the topic Leadership and Empathy.
So, on the first day of the exchange and after showing their preliminary work, they were assigned a short film project.
The forty-eight students were divided in groups of six and quickly decided on a leader, who was then asked to pick a topic. Every topic contains a conflict situation, which the teams are asked to record in a video, then suggest and explain a most empathetic solution.
Here are the complete instructions.
The start of a wonderful week in Bulgaria. We came a day earlier to visit the beautiful capital city Sofia. We can’t wait to start our project week tomorrow!
The Dutch students.
On November 14, the morning was spent visiting Sofia, a city very different from Lisbon, but with very interesting monuments and churches.
During the lunch hour we had free time to do whatever we wanted and right after that we went back to the hotel (by Metro), where we took a bus to Stara Zagora, one of the most important cities in Bulgaria. When we arrived in Stara Zagora, our Bulgarian partners were waiting for us and each person went to their respective homes.
The Portuguese students
Today the day started with the presentation of the videos (interviews with leaders) that we made and then with the distribution of the works that we will do. A psychologist talked us about what it is to be a leader and made us be “active listeners”, we listened to a song and watched a traditional Bulgarian dance, where we could learn a little about the culture of the country.
We had lunch in a restaurant near the school and then played some games with volunteers from GLOW. We visited the city of Stara Zagora, a guide told us a little about the history of Bulgaria, we visited Roman ruins and a mosque.
It was close to 5 pm when we finished visiting the city and the rest of the day we could do whatever we wanted with our partners.
The Portuguese students
Today we have started our project week at school. After a first night in our host families, where we got a warm welcome, we were ready to do some work. At school we started off with an introduction and we watched the films of all preassignments and we chose a topic on which we will work on this week in mixed international groups.We experienced a traditional Bulgarian song and dance and tried the traditional Bulgarian bread. We loved it!We attended a lecture about empathy and emotional intelligence, which was really interesting. After lunch we had a workshop and we played games, all organised by two Bulgarian students who went to GLOW academy. This is an academy, especially for girls and leadership. The girls did a great job and are an example for many students.Last but not least we went on a guided city tour in Stara Zagora and saw the mosque, the Roman remains and other nice sightings in town.
We had a great day and are looking forward to our next experiences here.
The Dutch students.
Next in our programme was a lecture on Emotional intelligence with Ms Vera Todorova, an assistant professor in educational and developmental psychology at Trakia University.
What is emotional intelligence? What is empathy?
Can we develop our emotional intelligence? Can empathy be learned?
Practicing active listening is one way we can do this. Another is to encourage rather than praise others.
Finally, and repeatedly stated throughout the week by our lecturers and speakers, our reactions to others’ mistakes should be such of acknowledgement, encouragement and focussed on what we have learnt and how we can benefit from them.
After the morning lecture, the afternoon was filled with activities to build our team and get to know each other.
Two students from Romain Rolland school, participants in the project and alumni from Leadership Academy GLOW, Liya Mihalkova and Ivaila Kirilova talked to us about leadership, inclusion and tolerance.
They had also prepared some icebreakers and games, which were a lot of fun.
In the end we played a quiz to find out our leadership style.
Here it is https://www.umassglobal.edu/…/what-type-of-leader-are..
How do we learn empathy?
Understanding others is only possible when we know them. Therefore, learning another language builds up on being more tolerant and inclusive.
Teodora Velichkova from Romain Rolland school involved the visiting students and teachers in a lesson in Bulgarian. In international groups, students from the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden had a look at the alphabet and some useful phrases, finishing up with short conversations in Bulgarian.
