Blog ESSR - Socialism Realised

Welcome to the ESSR!

Whether by accident or on purpose, you've stumbled across the blog of a brand new Erasmus + grant project called the Experience of State Socialism Reimagined (ESSR). Welcome!

You know what the ESSR project is, and you know who the partners are. There's still a lot for us to share, though, and the top priority right now is telling you how this is actually going to work. We have a plan for how the project will unfold over the next two years, and we hope that it will be useful for you as you put together your own projects.

How we work with our sources

The ultimate goal of our project is not only to create a series of lesson plans, but also to give you a glimpse of how we make them. Here's how we work with sources and the kind of obstacles we have to deal with.

On the way towards a lesson plan

In this blog post, we at the Sofia Platform would like to introduce some potential sources to you, along with the background behind them and the methodology that we used to choose them.

Primary Sources vs. the Public Space: The Case of the Metro

This blog is happy to introduce another partner in the ESSR project: Creative Teaching Group. CTG won’t directly contribute to creating any of the lesson plans; instead, they’re organizing seminars for the public where they will deal with Czechoslovakia’s communist past. Here, you can have a look at how their workshop on Prague’s metro went.

Building a Lesson Plan: The Aims and Principles of Lesson Plans

We're finally getting to our main goal: creating a stand-alone lesson plan. However, berofe we get down to it, our Bosnian member Haggadah presents the obstacles or wider teaching conditions that accompany the creative process of making the lesson plan. Here's the first set of their ideas.

Building a Lesson Plan: Structuring the Goals

Second part of Haggadah's ideas on how to build a lesson plan. Blog focuses on the proper structuring of a lesson so it reaches its educational goals.

Building Our Lesson Plan: The Election Experience During Czechoslovak State Socialism

So far, we’ve presented how we consider our sources, what questions we ask alongside them, and what methods we employ to turn them into productive teaching materials. Now, it’s time to proceed to a stand-alone lesson plan. Here we are: we proudly present our first complete lesson plan, created by the Czech team from the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and focused on the experience of an election during the communist period.

Building Our Lesson Plan: The Election Experience During Czechoslovak State Socialism — Part 2

We continue with the Czech team‘s lesson plan and invite you to explore our teaching materials in depth.

Lesson Plan: Ideology and Society, Ideology in the Body of Society

While the last two blogs were focused on the lesson plan of the Czech team and invited you to the background and the ideas behind its creation, this very blog from the Innovative Teaching Group, the Slovak team, presents guidelines to their lesson plan. It is focused on the ideology and the uses of the public space. In this stage of our project, our lesson plans are still intended for the domestic students or learners - but we hope you can already draw experience and inspiration from it!

Lesson plan: "Revival Process" in Bulgaria - Part 1

We are happy to present you the third lesson plan, created by our Bulgarian partner, the Sofia Platform. This lesson plan will not only guide you through the depths of the Bulgarian so-called "Revival process", but also tackles the topics of personal identity and ethnic minorities during communist era.

Lesson plan: "Revival Process" in Bulgaria - Part 2

Second part of the Sofia Platform lesson plan: follow the historical background of the so-called "Revival process".

Running Socialism Realised’s Twitter Account

One of the most effective ways to market anything in this technology-driven world is to use social media — but how do you get people to pay attention to you? ESSR’s team will be wrestling with this question once the lesson plans are ready for public use, and they’ll be able to build on what the Socialism Realised team has learned while trying to share their material with the world.

What’s Worked For Us Before

One of the most important considerations we had to make while putting together the ESSR team was finding organizations that all had a vested interest in, and experience with, education. That said, we all came to the project with our own experiences of what’s worked, and what hasn’t. We’ll be back at you later with some of our past mistakes, but this blog’s going to be all about our best practices.

The ESSR Team Spills: Our Biggest Mistakes

We gave you our best practices two weeks ago, but talking about our biggest mistakes — or, as we can call them, our worst practices — is potentially even more useful. After all, making a mistake or having a lesson go badly is a great way or learning what not to do for the next lesson. If we pass our mistakes along, then you don’t have to make them yourself.

Primary Sources vs. the Public Space: The Case of Prague Spring, 1968

We already discussed the usefulness of primary sources during work in the public space in this blog, using the case of the Prague metro. This time, we’ll focus on one moment in particular when the public space played a key role: Prague Spring, 1968.

Our Favorite Experiences in International Education, Vol.1: Bringing Socialism to America

Our project has already entered the piloting stage and the lesson plans we've presented in our previous blogs are now tested by teachers across Bulgaria, Slovakia, Bosnia and Czech Republic. In the meantime, while we're restlessly awaiting how it worked, we'd like to share with you the experience we've made during our previous international pilotings. Here's one of our most exotic assets: piloting of the Socialism Realised in the U.S.

Our Favorite Experiences in International Education, Vol.2: Translating the Context

In the course of developing our lessons, we’ve come to the point where we’re about to exchange the lessons that each partner has put together and tested in the local context so that we can test them on a transnational level. This is a very important point for our whole project, because the assumption upon which we planned it lies in the possibility of being able to transfer the individual lessons for use in different cultural contexts. It will be interesting for teachers and students to compare experiences, then, with communism and with state socialism in various countries of the former Eastern bloc.

Lesson Plan: The Relationship Between Religion and the State. The Jews in Bosnia & Herzegovina

You've seen lesson plans from three of our partners, and here is the introduction to lesson plan from the fourth partner: Haggadah, a Sarajevo-based organization for the preservation of Jewish culture and history in Bosnia & Herzegovina. We'll start with the introduction this time, and you'll get their latest draft of the lesson plan next time.

Lesson Plan: The Relationship Between Religion and the State. The Jews in Bosnia & Herzegovina - Part 2

Last post, you got the introduction to Hagaddah's lesson plan — and this time, you get the lesson plan itself. See what you think about the material they've gathered and the sources they're working with.

Piloting the ESSR: What Teachers Say

We've already guided you through the process of creating lesson plans, we've also shown you our own lessons: on elections, public space, and treatment of ethnic and religious minorities during state socialism. Now we've finally tested the lesson plans in our respective countries during the first, domestic round of piloting. In the following series of blogs, we'll be happy to share with you experience we've made, what we've learned and what has worked for us. Here comes the first part: an interview with one of our Slovak teachers.

Piloting the ESSR: How to Steer a Successful Pilot?

We continue with experience Sofia Platform has made in Bulgaria. As our colleague puts it: "Piloting educational materials is quite a unique process - it always offers a thrilling mix of excitement and uncertainty. No matter how prepared or experienced one may feel, entering a classroom with new and provocative teaching materials and awaiting the honest reactions of young people and students is enough to keep anyone on her toes."

Piloting the ESSR: Expecting the Unexpected

It is one thing to prepare a brand new lesson plan, to ponder its desired outcomes, to gather the best sources that you hope could work… and it is something completely different to throw your carefully constructed work into the middle of a classroom and watch what happens.

Summer School: Socialism Beyond Textbooks

Invitation to our ESSR project's summer school, which will take place on August 19th - 23rd!

Lost in Translation

It’s been a while since we last wrote a project blog, but that’s just how things are sometimes — you’re just held back, dealing with scores of organisational and administrative paperwork, before you can progress again. This has basically been the story of our last couple of months: we were preparing the translations of our lesson plans and then testing them in the international piloting phase. But even during the tedious process of translating, we gathered some useful experience we’d love to share with you!

Piloting the ESSR: Exoticism

Here it is — we’ve successfully steered our international round of piloting! It was no easy task to organize, prepare, or carry out the whole enterprise. And just as we hoped, we’ve learned a lot. In the following series of blogs, we are happy to share what it took to do and how it went with you. Here, we begin with the piloting that took place in the Czech Republic.

Piloting the ESSR: Teachers Give Feedback

Let’s continue rehashing the experience we gained during our international round of piloting. This time, we’ll see the Slovak teachers’ feedback on both the lesson plans and the entire project as a whole.

The Summer School Report

As we announced earlier, we planned a summer school for our students to thank them for their participation in our piloting sessions. At the end of their stay in Prague, they were asked to write several blogs about how they see or feel about the state socialist past. Since the summer school is well behind us, the time has come to release their work! But before we do so, we would like to take the opportunity to explain what led to the idea of having our students write blogs.

Students Blog: The “meat queue”

Here comes the first student blog, tackling with the presence of the ideology in the body of state socialism regimes.

Students Blog: The Scarf

The second student blog deals with the oppression during state socialism.

Student Blog: Memory

The third blog, as the heading suggests, is concerned with multiple meanings of the past, mediated by memory.

Students Blog: Architecture in Socialism

The last student blog takes form of a short story. It offers the perspective of a personal story.

Piloting the ESSR: Elections Without Choice - From the Newborn to the Military

We resume our international piloting report. This time, the Sofia Platform team will share its experience.

Piloting the ESSR: Dealing with the Past - The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina (part 1)

Let's finish our piloting reports with a series of blogs from our Bosnian colleagues. The first two blogs presents the results of their domestic piloting.

Piloting the ESSR: Dealing with the Past - The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina (part 2)

The second part of Haggadah's account of their domestic piloting.

Piloting the ESSR: Piloting International Lesson Plans in Bosnia and Herzegovina (part 1)

Our Bosnian partners from the Haggadah goes on with their piloting report. In this blog, they show us how teachers prepared for international piloting and how lessons worked for them.

Piloting the ESSR: Piloting International Lesson Plans in Bosnia and Herzegovina (part 2)

The second part of the Haggadah's piloting report, and our very last blog that reflects the piloting process. We hope you enjoyed our journey!

Socialism Realised and the 1989 in Czechoslovakia

Throughout this autumn, we are holding several multiplier events. This is opportunity for us to promote the whole project and to develop some of its core topics as well. Here is the resume of the event we held on the occassion of the Velvet Revolution anniversary (and in the streetcar).

“The Big Homecoming” Installation and Discussion on the Revival Process in Bulgaria

We go on with the review of our multipliers. In this blog, Sofia Platform looks back to their summer multiplier.

ITG: Multiplier reports from Trebišov (18.11., 19.11.) and Bratislava (3.12.)

The ITG team undertook several workshops with young students throughout Slovakia. Here's what they observed and learned!

Was our life better during communism?

In order to spread the knowledge of the past regime, our colleagues from the Sofia Platform took quite an unusaul approach... they held a stand-up comedy show.

ITG: Teaching the 1948-1989 era in Slovakia

In their final account, our Slovak colleagues reflect on the way the state socialist past is taught in their country.

Addressing the 1990s in two workshops

Historical Workshops held two workshops in just one day to reflect not only on the Czechoslovak transformation, but also on the teaching itself.

Bosnian Past in Debate: Cosmopolitan or Nationalist? - part 1

Here's the report from our very last publicly held event. It took place this autumn in Sarajevo. The first part gives some context about Bosnian's troubled past.

Bosnian Past in Debate: Cosmopolitan or Nationalist? – part 2

The second part of the Haggadag's report. Teachers and participants give their feedback.

So, what have we learned?

We started working on the ESSR project in early 2018, and now it’s 2020. The project’s work is behind us, and it’s time to push forward with our endeavors to develop effective new history teaching materials. But before we leave the ESSR behind, let’s look back for a moment and consider what we’re taking away from our work on the project.