School Identity

For more than 10 years now we have been actively working as a UNESCO project school. During a decade of constant development, we have made it our steady goal to pass on the ideals portrayed by UNESCO project schools around the world. Intercultural collaborations with partner schools and different organizations abroad have resulted in numerous projects that are witness to our dedication.
Bruno H. Bürgel, whose name our school bears, was not only an astronomer and author – he was just as much a visionary who thought well beyond his time. His open-mindedness towards tolerance and an open society lives on within students and staff at the Bürgel school and leads us to a better understanding of the importance of international values. In a world that moves closer together every day, a global way of thinking is essential. Our work as a UNESCO project school continues to give us opportunities to raise awareness for global issues as much as it has already created an intercultural climate in which our students have learned how it feels like to be part of a global classroom.

With many events students and staff at Bürgel school celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2008. Literally thousands of students have joined and left the Bürgel family since 1948 and so have many of its staff and supporters. These Bürgelians, as we like to refer to them, often share memories of a past they do not want to miss and will never forget. In many cases the unity that still brings students back to their former school – even many years after their graduation – is the result of small and big adventures that have forever broadened their horizons.

School Projects

International projects have always been and still are an important part of the school’s development since the early 1990s, while we attach great importance to the fact that the goals and contents of our projects do not go with a touristic approach but comply with a deliberate educational programme.
Bürgel school students reached for the stars back in 1999 when they visited French Guyana, following a visit of university and secondary school students from the South American country and former French colony one year earlier. More than 6.000 kilometres away from home, these Bürgel students were invited to join locals of diverse ethnicities for the carnival festivities in Cayenne, the capital. Later, they had a one-of-a-kind opportunity to visit the Ariane rocket launch facility at Arianespace in Kourou and joined French students at the University of Technology for a lesson. This was the first exchange of its kind in the school’s history – and it still stands out as an extraordinary experience for all participants in both countries.
Four years earlier, in October 1995, a group of students set off to Senegal in western Africa for a hands-on experience of a very different kind. Bürgel school students helped locals to build a youth club in Ziguinchor in the south of Senegal. A visit to the UNESCO club “Martin Luther King” in the capital city of Dakar was also a part of the programme – besides countless smaller adventures, most of them unplanned. The impressions brought home by the delegation were published and later documented in a photo exhibition. Honouring the enourmous achievements of the Bürgel delegation, the
school was awarded the title “School of the Year” at the international education exhibition “INTERSCHUL” in Stuttgart later that year.
Short of ten years later, in 2004/05, another fascinating project made it into the news when world-famous scientist and adventurer Arved Fuchs announced his collaboration with the Bürgel school on his “Icebound Expedition”. Students and teachers were witness to his mission to circumnavigate the North Pole on the Northwest Passage and remained in contact with Fuchs’ crew throughout the journey. They learned a lot about the Arctic and the major hazard arising from global warming – and finally met Arved Fuchs in 2005 when he visited the school to meet the Bürgel students who had participated in the project. He came just in time to see the documentation about the group’s findings that even consisted of a comprehensive web presentation.
This collaboration was part of Arved Fuchs’ efforts to create awareness for the issues the Arctic region is facing because of environmental threats originating in human actions. It had a massive influence on the participants of the project and induced further thoughts about global environmental issues. The school and Arved Fuchs have since vowed to stay in contact.
Other international collaborations helped to knit relations to Norway and Belarus.
There is, for instance, a tradition of lived solidarity in helping survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and their descendents. Further charity projects, such as one to the benefit of the victims of the tsunami catastrophe or the participation in the FIFA project “6 Villages for 2006” are only some to name in this same context, as was the Bürgel school’s direct involvement in building an SOS children’s village in Bovory/Ukraine.

In addition to these international projects, we believe in democracy as the backbone of free societies and have made it a tradition to take students on field trips to the German national parliament as well as to the legislative organs of the European Union in Brussels. Such efforts to engage our students in debates about the political processes counter the increasing disenchantment with politics of young adults and therefore strengthen our democracy.

Role of Sports

Sport plays a major role at Bürgel school as a link to several social values. It brings adolescents together and creates a basis of equal interests. The appeal of the competition adds to that. Furthermore, sport activities assist our students not only to identify with the ideals of their own school but also to feel proud to have helped shaping and supporting sports encounters. Our school’s philosophy not only aims at the projects’ results in scores and goals but also at emphasizing the participation as such. The general-education character represents the educational detail that stands in the foreground. Sport motivates vitality and creates integration.

Thus, already long before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 sport has been established as a firm column in our school concept. This element is still valid until today and will be consequently implemented into our daily educational work.
Since the introduction of our full-time programme in the school year of 2002/03 our school also offers the compulsory elective course “Playful sports activities” from
grade 7 on. Our sixth form continues this system in its courses offered as the subject sports can be chosen as an advanced course as well. This alternative for students striving for the university-entrance diplomas is awarded to students of only four schools in the federal state of Brandenburg.

In the school’s history our engagement in sports has also given us opportunities for intercultural encounters at several occasions. One of the most notable ones was an exchange with the government-run football school of Albania when a delegation of 15 young football players and their teachers visited Rathenow and Bürgel school.
A return visit of Bürgel students in Albania followed shortly after.

Especially the last two years of our intensive collaboration with the German football club “Hertha BSC Berlin” have contributed to the fruition of our idea to make a difference even more than before as a recognized UNESCO project school. Common campaigns which have been carried out in the UNESCO identity of our school have proven how effective well-prepared projects can be. As a partner school of “Hertha BSC” we have even realized projects with an intercultural claim with its professional football team.

Further Achievements and Educational Goals

Since the school year 1991/92 our teaching staff have been working on the organization of how to structure a comprehensive school. From the beginning on we have pursued the goal of offering further education for our students so that they might be able to take examinations in order to get their university-entrance diplomas. Our first graduation classes were opened in 1992/93. Since then students of 15 different years have received their certificates of having passed the Abitur (i.e. German university entrance qualification).

Since 1948 we have been keeping a school chronicle in which several reports about our educational work are captured. These reports offer the possibility to reasonably continue the tradition lines of our school from generation to generation, even if the personnel changes and dedicated students leave our school after having graduated from it.