The trips are cancelled.
After three o’clock, during the afternoons only a few people stay in school. Some teachers are still working and school staff is cleaning up the mess we left behind. But little do you know that on Tuesday afternoons a small group of hard-working pupils and some dedicated teachers meet up and discuss things about writing, short stories, translation and many other things in connection with literature?
I am one of those students who take part in an Erasmus+ KA2 project, which is a cooperation between schools. We write and post regularly online on a webpage created by Szabó Sára and Ujvári Réka, who said the following about the page:
„We created, designed and maintain this page. We upload the pieces of literature and translations they send to us and we make sure the page looks perfect all the time.”
We have partners in the Czech Republic, Latvia and Poland, in the cities of Usti na Labem, Grobina and Opole. The writings are published in national languages and in English too, so everyone can send in a literary piece of art, even you, not just in English but also in Hungarian.
Our school already held a meeting for the foreign teachers. During the week we showed them our city and they had discussions with our teachers about the project. From our group all of us will visit one of the cities mentioned above, and at the end of the project we will welcome the students from abroad for five days.
The main point of this project is to help us to write in decent language, to develop and practice our writing skills not just in our mother tongue but also in English, gives opportunity to our talent to be recognized and our art to be published. The teachers help us to achieve our goals, to perfect our works and they give us positive feedback and constructive criticism. The teachers also learn from each-other, try new techniques and methods, and improve their digital skills. It is a helpful programme for both of us.
I asked some students about the project and that what are we exactly doing in the afternoons, why they joined this two-year programme.
K. Jázmin: Well, it is really useful because I’ve got to know different literary genres and I could try myself in writing short stories. We also had to write a longer one as homework for the winter break, which we later read out loud to the group, it boosted my confidence and it improved my skill of talking in front of others. I love both traveling and translating, in addition I like trying out new things so I thought that this could be a pretty good opportunity to get to know new sides of myself and deepen my knowledge in literature.
J.Eszti: Every two weeks we have a class on writing methodology, where we learn about the different aspects of building up a story, for instance the importance of the first sentence. On the other weeks we have discussions with Ms. Bató Ágnes, who is the coordinator of our group. The project is about the mixture of traveling and writing, which I both really enjoy, even if I have not published anything yet. So I took on the opportunity, I try to write many things and be hard-working, knowing in the end I will be awarded with a journey.
G.Marcel: Like it was said before it is mainly because of the writing that I joined. I do enjoy expressing myself in more creative ways and I think writing and visual arts are something that I really love. I also love travelling and meeting new people so I think combining those two would be something I ultimately strive for.
Gy. Evelin: Honestly we learn how to write stories, last time for example, we talked about how to start writing a novel, about writing techniques and character-forming so we basically improve our skills everytime. I wanted to join this project because I reckon myself as a creative person and I love doing creative things like drawing, painting, writing short novels and stories, poems or even songs. So that is why I applied to this programme.
I totally agree with them. We are a group of students and teachers connected by the love of literature, writing, travelling and the English language. I think all of us are looking forward to travelling to different countries, learn from them and about their culture, and ending this project with something we can use later in our lives.
This project will not only give us experience in real-life skills, but also a chance to visit other schools, meet and work together with other students from the partner schools.
If you are interested, check out the website: https://writeyourfuture201.wixsite.com/mysite
And for submissions send your works to write.your.future.2019@gmail.com
