2021-1-BG01-KA220-SCH-000032717 Back to School – The Foundation of Happiness

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.