One Page Summary

The challenge: The challenger is the International School of Stockholm Futuraskolan.
Diversity in a classroom is linked to many features like place of origin, mother language, religion, ethnicity, culture, gender, physical and mental ability, potentials, interest, learning strategies, learning obstacles, hobbies, social and family live, etc. How can school communities learn to deal with diversity? Futuraskolan is looking for an innovative communication tool to prevent misunderstandings caused by diversity.
Our solution is called MYSunderstood („Me and Your stories understood”, short: MYS). MYS is an inclusive learning module. The module is based on digital story telling in combination with critical thinking and communication skills. MYS provides an effective and simple tool to assist teachers to improve social inclusion and acceptance of diversity as well as gender equality, integrating and using the advantages of digital tools as they are natural tools of expression for the young generation.
The learning module MYS aims to sensitize young people for the variety of features which forms our identities and personalities, why we are who we are. Pupils will get the opportunity to get to know each other from more perspectives than a traditional school life enables them to.
MYS enables young people to become critical media consumers, good listeners to the closer community, to become open-minded empathetic individuals, to get the connection between the personal lifes of their schoolmates and the societal big picture.
MYS is applicable for any school for children aged 13 and older. MYS is designed to be worked with for at least half a year, as a subject on a weekly basis.


"Critical thinking" – integrates e.g. the question “what do I know about foreign cultures from media - and what can I learn from my schoolmates?”, also how to identify fake news and bias, preconception views on gender, disability (ableism), religion and migration.

The item Diversity and Human Rights deals with features of identity and personality and introduces basics about fundamental human rights, pointing out disadvantaged groups and minorities. .

Communication skills offers basics in “non-violence communication”, “listening and four aspects of an information”, “role model”, skills how to carry out an interview, how to write a report, how to evaluate diverse information sources.

MYS will be designed inclusively, so there will be different difficulty levels of information, different approaches how to provide an information, different media offered (text, pictures, video, experience-based knowledge) but also a variety of group exercises suitable for a heterogeneous group of learners (mix age, mix-abled).

After the part of theories, pupils will create digital personal stories of their schoolmates, based on the knowledge of diversity, equipped with communication skills.

Implications of implementing the solution:
The learning module MYS will be developed by two partners: atempo (Austria) and SCHENcK (Germany). atempo brings in an expertise in digital tools, fostering equal opportunities for and empowerment of disadvantage people. The CEOs of atempo are members of Ashoka Austria. SCHENcK provides an expertise in communications skills, requirements of inclusive education and learning through diversity. SCHENcK is connected to the network of innovative inclusive schools “School on the Move”.
MYS is an answer to the very new challenges in Europe such as migration, rising socio-economic gap, culture diversity and cultural poverty, tensions between diverse religious groups, political right movements and segregation. Such as information overload, fake news, data protection issue, generation conflict between digital natives and digital sceptics.
Critical thinking and communication skills are not part of the school curriculum. The experience shows that there is a need to implement these methods sustainably in schools. MYS provides material that schools can use and adopt easily. MYS can also be quickly explained to policy and decision makers to implement the MYS package into teachers training.
Schools need good materials and impulses, good program to train the teachers and good inclusive offers a variety of pupils can work with easily. MYS provides such offer.