In the beginning of November 2016, the History Teachers’ Association of Macedonia (ANIM) successfully conducted a total of four workshops in two parallel session where the learning activities developed in the project Silencing Citizens through Censorship were piloted. The facilitators of the workshops, Mire Mladenovski and Bisera Srceva, presented the learning activities to an audience of 70 history teachers from all over Macedonia and gained essential feedback for future improvements of the activities.
Two learning activities were piloted: the already completed activity titled ‘Dangerous Art’ and ‘The Music and Arts: Then and Now’, an activity still in its development stages.
Taking into account challenges caused by working with 35 people at once, the teachers were divided into groups of around six people. When composing the group the organisers made sure of mixing participants from the Macedonian and the Albanian community, history teachers and history student teachers, as well as from different age groups. During the final part of the workshop sessions, the teachers convened around one table to discuss impressions, opinions and to collect general feedback.
The general response was that the teachers found the learning activities to be very engaging and interesting for the students. They particularly highlighted the fact that the learning activities contained sources like popular songs, comics, and poems was very positive, noting that students usually are more attentive when being presented with audio and visual sources by the teacher.
Although the learning activities were originally foreseen for high school students aging from 16 – 18 years, many of the teachers suggested that with small adaptations in methodology and approach, the activities could also be used for students in 9th (final) grade of primary schools.
