The actual context of the COVID-19 creates a wealth of insecurity, uncertainty for pupils, youth, students, and a massive challenge for educators and youth workers. The situation in the various realities of the partners is presenting distress, difficulty in engaging with students and keeping them motivated (besides isolated examples), showing the uncertainty of future employment possibilities and maybe a drastic change of marketplace needs.
Aim: We are addressing the needs of the primary, gymnasium, and high school teachers and educators working with minorities, fewer opportunities for youth, and rural youth in creating innovative approaches that are more inclusive, using digital environments, and dealing with emotional understanding. Thus, the project supports participants (prospective teachers) to deliver high-quality teaching that deals with the complexity of the learners by focusing their approaches on inclusion, improving attainment and continuing education as well as empowering learners.
Objectives:
O1.Developing more flexible methods for involving students in actively learning the curricula during the class hours, and test the most relevant ones throughout the lifetime of this project and measure the commitment to finish all education cycles. (NLP, mindfulness, e-learning). This objective meets SDG 1 and 4.
O2.Sharing innovative techniques for teaching and measuring impact of teaching to boost the ability of students to learn and participate in the process, supported by e-learning, that are applied and tested by the teachers in classrooms/ online. By the end of the project those techniques would be filtered and adapted to the realities of the participating countries (dance, music, theatre, arts, digital art, digital environments). This objective meets SDG 1 and 4.
O3.Methods for blending digital environments with practical, hands-on activities for learning STEM that are transferred to the teachers during a Training Course, and applied in the classroom by those. Those will be shared during Training Courses and integrated in the teachers activity through practical assignments (movement, music, art, e-learning, gamification). This objective meets SDG 4 and 10.
O4. Methods for psycho-emotional balance, that can be used/applied by both teachers and students, for improved focus, decision making, clarity, health and wellbeing, in/outside classroom. Those shall be acquired during the lifetime of the project and transferred by the teachers to other fellow teachers (NLP, mindfulness, rhetoric, music, dance). This objective meets SDG 3, 4 and 10.
NEEDS
The common need is integrating approaches for supporting learners with fewer opportunities achieve and maintain educational development:
-Literacy among youth, achievement in STEM topic, emotional balance, digital & technology, employability in the actual and future job market.
-Improving the approaches of teachers, educators in classroom, activities and homework making those holistic and appealing to the learners of all ages.
-implementing a structured non-formal approach for involving disadvantaged youth, pupils and students in up-skilling and adapting to the actual job markets’ needs as well as including those youth in the community participation.
-Prototyping tools and methods based on what techniques are used by teachers in classroom now, the ones shared by the facilitators in the training courses and the testing and observation of those techniques in the classrooms of the teachers attending those activities.
For supporting those priorities we bring forward:
– Tools from coaching and Neuro Linguistic Programming that are giving educators and teachers the ability to understand how to use linguistic tools and other tools in order to meet pupils at their best, and it brings ways on how to use humour and speaking tools.
– Mindfulness as a means to access balance at the level of mind and body for getting young people calibrated for learning, focus and kindness.
– Visual art and visual stories promoted by schools in schools and in classrooms
– Theatre techniques to be used in front of the classroom
– Theatre as a tool for expressing the unexpressed, hidden thoughts and ideas through personas as well as role plays, improvisation and humour.
– Digital art for meeting interactive ways of exploring methods of teaching, inclusion, and transferring learning.
– Dance & movement as methods that enhance the way that teachers are managing certain activities and adapt the way they are teaching certain classes of maths and sciences.
– Music and rhetorics as mediums that are amplifying the way that both teachers/ educators and pupils/ students are interacting, talking and transmitting information as well as music that helps to accelerate learning processes.
– E-learning as a tool for enhancing the capabilities of teachers in various online environments, sharing interesting information with students and for pupils and student.
The consortium is expecting to achieve the following results during the project and at its completion.
We are breaking down the results in two sections. First part is related to the results of the planned learning teaching training and the tasking for those, and the second part are the results of the work for the intellectual outputs.
Results:
R1/IO1: Interactive eBook – Comprising a collected research of good practices at EU level with tools available for: psycho-emotional balance, mindfulness, focus, movement, art as methods for inclusive, e-learning, coaching, as more engaging teaching tools. Format Training Courses content and structure. The ebook will include also statistical information measured throughout the project, indicators of impact and indicators on the status of current methods/ proposed methods (as they are tested by the participants involved in the FTCs).
Impact graph of the methods on the pupils as teachers are implementing new methods.
R2/IO2: Format Training Courses – All the training courses will be implemented by trained specialists/ facilitators who work/worked in and with schools, young people, children, teachers. The trainers will create, adapt and improve all the techniques based on what the participating teachers will mark as their needs in regards to the specific topic.
R3/IO3: Recorded Tutorials for all training courses – During the Training Courses we will have recording equipment that will serve to record training sessions that will go on the elearning platform of each partner.
R4/IO4: E-Learning Platform Co-Creation and Integration – Using an existing platform for e-learning that partner organisations will be implementing/ integrating in the school/NGOs website for offering specialised knowledge towards their learners. The interactive eBook will share some of the content on the online platform of each partner.
- The learning teaching training activities (R2) are foreseeing group activities that are implemented during the short-term staff mobilities and accompanied by testing and implementing a variety of activities in the classroom. After each activity teachers, educators and youth workers will record the results in a “teaching log” dedicated and structured for each partners
C1. Format Training Course (FTC) on Neuro Linguistic Programming & Mindfulness – 4 teachers & 1 youth worker from each partner school/local partner schools/ NGO to participate in the training course.
C2. Format Training Course (FTC) on Visual Arts and Theatre – 4 teachers & 1 youth worker from each partner school/local partner schools/ NGO to participate in the training course.
C3. Format Training Course (FTC) on Movement, Dance, Music & Rhetoric – 4 teachers and 1 youth worker from each partner school/local partner schools/ NGO to participate in the training course.
C4. Format Training Course (FTC) on E-learning and digital toolbox – 4 teachers & 1 youth workers from each partner school/local partner schools/ NGO to participate in the training course
C5. Blended Mobility for Young People – where 8 pupils and 2 accompanying persons from each partner school/NGO will participate in a training that will embed all the topics trained in
the TCs and will be delivered and tested by a team made of teachers who participated in the TCs.
- Local Class Events. Teachers will apply all the techniques and methods in practice after each training course for a period of 2 months, marking the results that they observe/record during their classrooms. All the information will be gathered and analysed by the Management Team and suggest any hints that are needed.
Multiplier Events. An event will take place in each partner country, and in the cases where two partners are from the same country, it will be undertaken in cooperation and involve all associated partners and regional, national cooperators.
