THE FOUNDATION OF HAPINESS

Developing a social and emotional curriculum with an emphasis on happiness for motivating students

About Project

The vision of the project is to develop concepts and methods of education based on restoring children's smiles during and after pandemic time.

PARTNERS IN PROJECT

Goals

Happy children and students

The goal of this project is to develop a social and emotional curriculum with an emphasis on happiness to encourage motivation in students, and to train teachers and include parents on how to approach primary school students and create conditions for happy children and students.

CURRICULUM

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.

TRAINING

To develop training programs for teachers with an emphasis on happiness in order to improve students’ creativity by creating an atmosphere and students’ mindset.

AVATAR APP

Creating a motivational avatar application is the goal of who will be the main bearer of this project.

IDENTIFIED PROBLEM

The biggest problem is that the pandemic has affected the physical and mental health of children combined with a serious lack of motivation to learn and to be part of school life in general causing widespread trauma. This has led to poor or below-average education, loss of work routines and habits.

TARGET GROUPS

The target group of this project will be:

1

Students ages 6-10

2

Parents of students ages 6-10

3

Teachers of students who are ages 6-10

NEEDS

Pandemic has affected the physical and mental health of children combined with a serious lack of motivation to learn and to be part of school life in general causing widespread trauma. This has led to poor or below-average education, loss of work routines and habits. (https://tinyurl.com/yr3czep7 )

Teachers should be provided with instructions and training to motivate students, as well as instructions for selecting and implementing happiness curriculum. Teachers usually focus only on students ’academic skills and do not pay attention to the importance of their social and emotional skills.

Gathering good practice across the EU related to teaching about happiness will help to choose which practices and activities really work in order to create a happiness curriculum.

Teachers with adequate training toolkits will be educated and trained to implement that curriculum in schools. Students will learn skills to be motivated and to be involved in school life with a positive attitude. In the same way, by creating a parents guidebook, parents will be aware and willing to cooperate and connect with their children. Together they can find motivation and satisfaction in learning and connecting through positive thinking.

Students would gain social competencies, inspiration for creativity, critical thinking, gain good social behavior habits, high self-esteem and self-efficacy, lower screen time per day, education in an interesting way, learn about what inspires them and makes them happy and motivated.

PROJECT APPROACH

Our intervention logic for the target groups will be:

Analysis of the existing good practises used in school and identification of the gaps;

Awareness-raising about social and emotional skills based on happiness and their impact over students’ behavior and results;

Development of social and emotional training by combining 4 existing methodologies: Positive psychology, Growth mindset, GRIT and Social metacognition;

Creation of supplementary materials for teachers - booklet and an extensive training toolkit;

Creation of a virtual character-avatar for more engaging, inspirational and motivational learning process;

Developing a training program for the teachers who will implement the project in the schools;

Implementation of the social-emotional training in the partner schools;

Conduction of in-school trainings/workshops to multiplicate the results of the project;

Organisation of local multiplying events to disseminate the project results

Why is this project transnational?

COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on children’s education all over the world. Adapting the educational system and keeping students motivated is a complex global problem that requires schools, teachers and parents from different countries to work together to make an international solution.

Outcomes of the project

Positive impact on the awareness of teachers from partner schools regarding the importance of students’ happiness. It has been proven that teachers at schools do not pay enough attention to the soft skills of the students due to different reasons.

Three different innovations

Innovations support our project focus, such as metacognition that allows a person to control their learning, to set learning goals, and to choose strategies to achieve those goals.

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