Back to School - The Foundation of Happiness


Programme: Erasmus+
Key Action: Partnerships for cooperation and exchanges of practices
Action Type: Cooperation partnerships in school education
Participants:
- Elementary school Otetz Paisii, Bulgaria – Coordinator
Edukopro, Bosnia & Herzegovina
- JU OS Aleksa Santic Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina
- JumpIN Hub – Associação para a Inovação e Empreendedorismo, Portugal
- Language school Sky Ltd, Bulgaria
- SMART IDEA Igor Razbornik s.p., Slovenia
- Zavod Aspira, zavod za razvoj posameznika in družbe, Slovenia
Summary
Background
Experiences from the previous period have
taught us that learning requires a motivating factor and that only a satisfied
and smiling child has an openness to new knowledge and strengthening their
competencies. After a long period of online teaching and partial use of the
living word, we believe it is necessary to find a new way that would make it
easier for teachers and parents to make their children happy.
The pandemic affected the physical and
mental health of children combined with a serious lack of motivation. This has
led to poor or below-average education, loss of work routines and habits.
(https://bit.ly/3fkFWoG ), which opened the need to devise a way to make
students happy, and thus motivate them to adopt educational content.
Teachers should be provided with
instructions and training to motivate students, as well as instructions for
selecting and implementing a happiness curriculum. Teachers usually focus only
on students ’academic skills and do not pay attention to the importance of
their social and emotional skills (https://bit.ly/3eC12zV ). With this, we
conclude that teachers also need additional education and gaining new knowledge
on how to make their students happy.
Parents of students are not teachers and
often students do not have the support of their parents due to parental work,
but also due to the inability of parents to help students in mastering school
materials. Therefore, it is necessary for this project to provide support to
parents in order to participate with the help of teachers in creating a
curriculum of happiness for students.
The realization of such a project would
significantly affect the healthy development of mental and physical health in
students, and would help parents and students in the realization of this idea.
Objectives
The aim of this project is to develop a
social and emotional curriculum with an emphasis
on happiness in order to stimulate
motivation in students, and thus train teachers and parents on how to approach
students and create conditions for their happiness, and then enable students to
use independently and allow suggestions progress (based on experience).
This project will be based on objectives
such as collecting good practices from schools and creating a booklet with best
practices in social and emotional training at EU level, developing a social and
emotional curriculum with an emphasis on happiness as a basis for motivating
students.
One of the goals is to develop training
programs for teachers with an emphasis on happiness to improve student
creativity by creating an atmosphere and thinking of students.
Creating a motivational application for
avatar is the goal that will be the main bearer of this project. Creating an
online AVATAR character will help you gain new knowledge by applying IT
technologies in a very simple and effective way to reach school age children.
Students will be satisfied with an interesting character, but they will also be
eager to learn the teaching content in a completely new way, which will evoke
the stated feelings.
Activities
The first is the creation of the Good
Practice Manual for Happiness Curricula in EU Schools, where we will be based
on the creation of a methodology for collecting good practices, where each
partner will collect at least ten good practices in their environment. We will
then base ourselves on assessing the collection of good practices and creating
a final list of them.
After creating the list, we will be based
on the development of a final manual and make an analysis based on happiness
and identifying gaps in the EU report and of course translate all the material
into partner languages.
We will build on the development of
educational content about happiness and build a matrix of competencies and
skills before and after assessment and prepare educational content on happiness
and form focus groups with external experts in the field.
After preparing educational content for the
curriculum, we have planned to organize a second transnational meeting, where
we will work on improving educational content about happiness and translate all
content into partner languages.
We will then base ourselves on piloting
tools in schools, collecting feedback and evaluating content, and then working
on improving the tools and translating all content into partner languages.
After that, our intention is to create a
Guide for Parents “How to Support Happiness Training at Home” where we will
work on developing content for parents based on the Happiness curriculum. We
will work on developing exercises for home use to support the development of
social and emotional skills. For that purpose organize focus groups with
experts in the field to check the content, then improve the content and
finalize the Guide.
Finally, the holder of the whole project
will be the development of a digital application for motivational avatar, where
we will work on developing the concept of virtual character, create a guide
“How to motivate students through a virtual character in the
classroom”, conduct pilot testing in schools, collect feedback and assessments
based on which improvements will be made in the digital application.
All content, done through the project, will
be translated into partner countries and finally we will hold a Transnational
Meeting in Rousse, Bulgaria, local dissemination conferences and a final
conference on dissemination of project results with workshops.
Impact
The pandemic appeared suddenly, leaving
behind many consequences that are seen especially in the segment of primary
school education. Children were left without educational, motivational, social
support, which caused a decrease in their quality of life, causing many
psychological consequences, making children unhappy and lost.
Children have lost a lot in the time of
online education, live contact with teachers, socialization skills, and
motivation to learn which has led to a decrease in their quality of life.
https://bit.ly/3u7E60Q
Teachers, the first link in the knowledge
system and transmitters of knowledge, can, with adequate techniques, motivate
students to make up for lost time, to catch up in the material, encourage
critical thinking and motivate students to participate in learning and school
life.
Needs for happiness in life, motivation,
better education and making up for lost knowledge in constructive and creative
way. https://bit.ly/3u7E60Q
The overall implementation of this project
will lead to healthier and happier students, which was relatively disrupted
during the COVID 19 pandemic.
By developing a handbook of good luck
curriculum practices in schools in the EU, the most significant impact will be
on students as they will develop the necessary skills to learn how to deal with
and strengthen these difficulties, preparing them for future challenges.
The development of educational content
about happiness with a positive attitude will lead to a significant effect on
the motivation and inclusion of students in school life. It will help students
acquire important social and emotional qualities, which will improve their
overall future life.
By developing a training program for
teachers, this project will have a positive impact on the way teachers will access
online education. The impact will be significant as it will lead to
professionalisation in terms of teaching management, thus creating space for
quality education for all students. The positive effects of this program will
be realized in:
- – development of teaching skills for online teacher education, which will lead to the upgrade of education for the digital age;
- – increasing self-confidence in terms of professional ability to produce quality educational works;
- – strengthening cooperation with families for crisis management;
- – strengthening the teacher-student partnership as active participants in the educational process.
Creating a guide for parents “How to
support happiness training at home” will achieve a significant effect on
parents ’awareness and desire to strengthen cooperation and connection with
their children. Together they will find greater motivation and satisfaction in
learning social and emotional skills. Another positive result will be the
correction of the parent-teacher-student relationship.
A virtual character-Avatar with a guide
“How to motivate students through a virtual character in the classroom” will
have a significant impact on students participating in the project, improving
their social and emotional skills, overall mental health, motivation to achieve
better academic achievement and happier children.