28 speakers took part in the 1st Symposium; from the 14 schools represented 9 were public schools and 5 private. Of these, 2 schools were International and 1 Special, 4 were primary level schools and 10 were of secondary level. One school was from the provinces, namely Davlia in the prefecture of Fokis. In all 180 people attended the Symposium.

The first paper (Frankouli-Vele I., 4th Evening High School of Athens) vividly described the potential of educational texts for preparing the knowledge and awareness of students for the Acropolis.

The following three presentations showed the work undertaken by students during the open-day program “A Day on the Acropolis” . Firstly an Art teacher (Anousi R., Experimental Protestant School, 1st grade), who had had the opportunity to accompany her students in that same program for two consecutive years, demonstrated the different approaches and the progress in learning, made by the students from one year to the next.

Three 1st grade Middle School teachers (Maistrelis S., 3rd Middle School of Keratsini, and Gana A. & Zografaki E., 4th Middle School of Haidari) followed, presenting their work before and after the program: poems, paintings, a theater play as well as the composition and printing of the 106 students’ work as a 50-page booklet under the title “A Day on the Acropolis.” The publication of the product of student teamwork is imperative as part of the modern teaching process. The manifold experience of desktop publishing using word processing and laser printers can relatively easily produce pleasing results and form a valuable source of information for the students.

This was followed by a presentation of the Acropolis as a medium for an Art class (Hatzi Z., 53rd Middle School of Athens, 3rd grade). The students learned about the various orders of classical buildings and to produce architectural plans, whilst also creating their own designs.

The following paper came from the Special Middle-High School for Handicapped Children of New Liosia (Malamidou S.), and presented many creative projects of the experiences produced by the specialized educators in cooperation with our Institution.

A smaller “A Day on the Acropolis” program was organized and conducted on school premises by the students of the Greek-French school Jeanne d’Arc (Polidoros M.), thus giving all the other students a taste of it, too.

The next teacher (Dekastro M., Moraitis School, 4th grade Elementary) talked about how she prepared her school for the visit on the Acropolis.

The next presentation was a joint effort by two teachers (Kehagia L., Papakyiriakou K.,) from a school in Davlia, Boiotia. Following the program “A Day on the Acropolis”, they adapted the elements they found most interesting to the chief archaeological site of their area, Delphi. This adaptation of our Acropolis program to the provinces, and especially to Delphi, is exemplary and indicates its potential application to other classical sanctuaries, following further study and extra effort by the teacher.

The following talk (Vasilaki P., Xyntaropoulou B., Louka M., Sakelaridi G., Stefou Z., of I.M. Panagiotopoulos School) introduced the audience to a children’s book about the Parthenon Frieze created by 93 4th grade Elementary students. The young age of the students and the complexity of the subject make their participation especially interesting, considering the emotional charge, imagination and level of understanding of our young authors and artists in the Panathenaic procession.

Again the endless possibilities of the Parthenon Frieze for teaching programs became obvious during the next report (Papoulidou-Michalakopoulou P., 5th Elementary School of Moshato, 4th grade), which was about the re-enactment of the Panathenaic procession at a school.

In the next talk, a class of 1st grade Middle School students from an International school (Bogo J., Emanuelli M., Grue C., Kondossis A., Le Cardinal M., Sakaridou F., Samothrakis I., Rotchettis M., of the Greek-French School) tried a different approach; they integrated the Acropolis into curriculum material in the following lessons: Biology, Geography, History, Art, Mathematics, Music, Science and Technology, Philology (Greek and French), Physics and Chemistry.

Drama class is the combination and culmination of all subjects. The ensuing paper came from an International school (Aristidou N., Campion School), where this course is obligatory and the teacher pursued specific studies in that area.

A presentation (Skourtelli R., Campion School, 3rd grade Middle School) followed, where the combined instruction of physics and chemistry evolved from an article in the newspaper “The Observer.” It was titled “Acid rain in Athens” and connected History and Culture with Chemistry.

For the last presentation the teacher (Bouda A., 4th Middle School of Piraeus, 1st grade) used the museum kit ”The Art of Stone Sculpture”. Following the theme “The art of stone cutting from ancient times until today” the children studied its history from Cycladic idols to the classicizing objects of the First Cemetery on to contemporary sculpture. At the same time they did some work with marble, learned about ancient and modern quarries and, of course, observed the traces on it. The excellent material presented to us by the teacher became part of the museum kit.

The full text of these presentations was published in Archaeology under the title “Teachers talk about the Acropolis”, issue 52, Athens, 1994.