An Invitation to Pedagogues in Schools and Other Educational Institutions

The Intercultural Youth Magazine trait d’union (hyphen) is an international learning project, based on the communication and cooperation of young people – and pedagogues – from different cultures and countries. It is on the one hand a forum where the young can exchange their views on topics of common interest. On the other hand, it offers a lot of opportunities for educational, especially teaching, purposes. We want to invite you, the pedagogues all over the world, to use these opportunities by joining this project.

Since its beginning, 27 schools from 14 countries and 5 continents have contributed in 30 languages. Being currently in a phase of reconstruction, we restarted with two educational institutions, a secondary school from India: the Gurugram Public School of Gurgaon, near New Delhi, and one from Germany: the Gisela-Gymnasium München (Munich).    

As to the number and scope of the contributions, there are no minimum requirements. The flexible project structure allows to suit trait d’union smoothly to the interests and possibilities of the participating institutions and persons.

The common work of the international team is designed to prepare an issue with a broadly conceived topic in which the interests of the young and the teaching contents of as many different disciplines as possible overlap, like e.g. “We Are All Strangers”, “Boys & Girls” or “Courage”.

The next issue, provided to come out in the course of 2018, shall be “Integration or Separation: How Do We Want to Live?” ranging from the individual field of experience (like isolation inside the class) to the social (like migration, its reasons and consequences) and political areas (e.g. Brexit or President Trump’s plan to build a wall between the USA and Mexico).  

The editors’ activities are not restricted to printable media (texts, drawings, photos), but reach to contributions that can be recorded through audio and video. trait d’union Radio and trait d’union TV serve to document these activities. Let us not forget the Discussion section.

The main objective of all acts of communication and cooperation within the trait d’union project is to encourage and to support intercultural competence, being one of the social and vocational key qualifications in the age of globalization. A particular role is attributed to the possibility to make comments on the contributions of the colleagues on the commentary function. This can fulfill various functions: asking, adding own experiences, comparisons, approval and criticism, and planning extensions of the contribution. Important is openness and mutual respect.

The use of trait d`union as a project complement in the classroom can enhance the following elements according to the desired `dosage`:

1. Strengthening of the daily life context ("... sed vitae") through thematic intersections with current events and interests of young people
2. Motivation support through action and product orientation
3. Interdisciplinary learning
4. Orientation to the individual interests and abilities of the students through the division of labor within the overall context of the project, by choosing between different …
1. basic orientations: the journalistic or the creative one
2. media: texts, drawings, photos, audios, videos
3. genera: e.g. reports, interviews, comments / stories, dialogues, poems
5. Acquisition of special competencies within the workspace of the project (values, capacity for teamwork, organization, technics, media)
6. Communication and cooperation with young people (and possibly adults = teachers) from other cultures for common products (newspaper)
7. Use of trait d`union contributions from foreign partners in the classroom (authenticity, daily news) with the possibility of subsequent feedback to the author (inquiries, exchange of experience and opinions)
8. Change of perspective
9. Increase of intercultural competence

If you are interested in participating, please contact us: lothar.thiel@traitdunion.online

Welcome to trait d’union!