Crossing borders by Michel Hogenes, March 27, 2022
Sitting at Prague Airport, contemplating the interesting trip I made to Hradec Králové. The ‘Mitigating Covid Together’ team met in this nice city with its beautiful renaissance and baroque architecture for their Erasmus+ multiplier event and so-called transnational meeting.
Thursday, March 24, the Faculty of Education of the University of Hradec Králové organized the multiplier event in the form of a conference entitled: ‘Educating the Whole Being: Inclusive, International and Intercultural Perspectives.’ National and international speakers were invited to share their insights on the topic of the conference. This resulted in a nice kaleidoscope of presentations with an interesting blend of research and practice. I’ll highlight a few examples:
Jan Hábl, lecturer at the University of Hradec Králové, addressed a keynote speech on ‘Comenius Education, the Notion of “Wholeness” or “Universality”’. In this speech he presented as a meditation, Hábl showed us that Comenius’s ideas and view on the world are still highly relevant. Comenius’ notion of human beings hovering between angels and demons is painfully visible in the current conflict in Ukraine.
Caterina Sugranyes, professor at Universitat Ramon Llull, Spain, shared her insights on the use of English as lingua franca. In her presentation, entitled ‘Creating Stories to Rethink Culture: The Development of Intercultural and Plurilingual Competences in Teacher Training Programs’, she stated (among others) that monolingual societies are virtually non-existent. It is therefore necessary for teachers and teacher educators to rethink their teaching, especially those who work in the field of language education.
During the afternoon sessions participant could choose from a variety of workshops and roundtable discussions. Christopher Medalis (Palacky University) and Maria Suarez Salgado, president of Hradec Králové’s Erasmus Student Network focused on the student voice.
They facilitated a roundtable discussion with three Erasmus students from Colombia, Turkey, and Brazil and with Eija Syrjämäki, lecturer at Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Finland. It was a real pleasure to hear what positive impact student exchange programs have on the lives of young people. They benefit from these programs by gaining personal, and intercultural competencies as well as having a better job perspective. They also showed that becoming an exchange student is not always easy. One student told us that he had to illegally cross the border of his country to get a necessary visa in another country. A trip of 1000 km in small busses to get a visa and another 1000 km to get back! All three students commanded lots of respect for their efforts to study in the Czech Republic. It was a wonderful well-organised conference that has yielded many new insights.
The next day, Friday, March 25, was our transnational meeting. We discussed a variety of topics relating to the ‘Mitigation Covid Together’ project. We are all very happy with the platform that has been launched: www.goingvirtual.eu. This platform will convey all materials that we as a project team are working on, but also offers education professionals and students from our community the possibility to share their ideas and materials. We hope and think that the platform will contribute to better online learning and teaching.
I look forward to our coming transnational meeting in Finland. Although I still have to be patient as this meeting will only take place in October. I’d like to thank Leona Stašová & Radek Vorlíček, our colleagues at the University of Hradec Králové for all the time and effort they spend on organising this wonderful conference and hosting the transnational meeting. I think that I can say that we all loved being in Hradec Králové. I hope to visit you again soon.