This group of schools is working together in an Erasmus Plus Project, called

POP Proclamation of Positivity, Teachers for Positive Psychology, with the help of Ms Szylvia Fodor, from the University of Budapest, Faculty of Psychology.

Here is the project presentations:

Rationale: The hectic world we live in, the Covid-19 pandemic situation, the constant and restrictive lockdowns all mean we need to face new challenges as educators, teachers and while our own lives are largely affected, too, both in our professional and private lives. As a result, we wanted to find new solutions to post Covid classrooms, where we can adapt to the new surroundings and needs of students. We believe the insights of psychology and especially positive psychology can provide us the answer to promoting school well-being and feeling of happiness, so essential on the level of individual and also on the level of communities. It seems obvious that even if the ultimate aim is helping the community prosper and be strengthened by positivity and happiness, there need to be places and sources where they can turn to for support. Therefore, it is the schools, starting with their leaders and teachers that need to be strengthened this way in order to enable them to provide this support for their community. In most cases it is not the vocation of these professionals or the idea of supporting the general well-being of the community of their students and everyone else involved that teachers and others in the field lack, rather the know-how of doing it in a valid and effective way. So primarily our project aims to support teachers and other professionals involved to equip them with theoretical background and approaches as well as skills and practices that help them first learn and embed these positive ideas in their own lives, then implement them in their everyday practices. For setting our aims and objectives in the best possible way, using our strengths in a realistic manner, we decided to use George T. Doran’s SMART criteria for good goals. According to his model a good aim needs to be Specific, so our intention is to take part in on-line training sessions specifically aimed to equip us with the theoretical background and practical help to be able to design and test teaching content related to positive psychology and general well-being of students and staff members alike. We plan to do the testing of the usability of the created content not only in our immediate surroundings, but also on an international level, thus making sure, that in the end we will be able to help educators not only in our own countries, but also beyond them. We also want it to be Measurable, therefore our expert worked out the ways for testing our improvements by the end of the training sessions and we have already thought about the form of the final products. In the SMART acronym A can stand for an Achievable or Attainable goal, therefore we carefully planned who will do which part of the project while continually being in touch from the time of preparation. The Relevance of supporting teachers through the means of positive psychology is present in all the activities and discussions in our project. Finally, we must be Time-bound as we assign specific time-frames for each of the planned activities. Therefore, educators will be able to learn a new approach to their own life, or refresh it if they already share these positive views and gain more insight on beneficial practices, they can further develop themselves through discussions and brainstorming in international groups of several fields of education, not just teaches of their own subjects. They are not only to learn about the concepts, but also to embed them, so that in the end they will be able to live their lives with the ideas and methods of positivity as well as show others their benefits and teach it to their students and even colleagues, with the ultimate aim of making schools more enjoyable places, where the well-being of teachers and students are just as important as their academic success and achievement.

Objectives: What do you want to achieve by implementing the project? The positive focus of psychological research emerged with the 21st century, so its novelty is still evident, especially as far as learning and teaching methods and approaches are concerned. In the last decades experts were focusing on how to help make life worth living and how to define, quantify, and create wellbeing. In 2012 Dr. Martin E. Seligman selected five components that people pursue because they are intrinsically motivating and they contribute to wellbeing, and he created the so called PERMA model what we decided to use as a backbone of our project. The five elements or components in PERMA are Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishments. In our project our objectives include learning more about these elements and other useful aspects of positivity from an expert of this new psychological field in about 50 hours of teacher training, then create our own teaching content which may be tested first in our own school environment, then with international groups of teachers and students to be able to prove their usability, and if necessary improve or adjust them, so that they could be used not only in real-life teaching situations, but also in teacher training. So after learning the theory behind this new approach we would like to see examples of teaching and learning methods to become able to create our own materials that by the end of the project can be documented, tested and finally edited and published in a form of a booklet for the reference of future educators, students or even teacher trainers who are interested in the topic and share our vision. According to this vision we strive to build resilience, wellbeing, and optimism as part of preserving and promoting mental health of participants and enable them to be able to teach the learned methods and approaches to others. The aims include equipping teachers individually and in teams with practical skills, as well as their organizations with information to be able to improve quality of life first of all for themselves, then for their students, thus even reducing the chances of mental health issues like depression and burn-out. We share the view that the time has come for a new prosperity, one that takes flourishing seriously as the goal of education as much as of parenting. Learning to value and to attain flourishing must start in the formative years of schooling, and it is this new prosperity, supported by positive education that the world needs especially after the hardships we had to endure in the last few years. Therefore, we would like to achieve a general improvement of the school environment, starting with our own schools, where all the participants enjoy being instead of just suffering it as a necessary means to a higher aim. If in the future we can achieve that all people working and studying in the school experience positive emotions during the time they are connected with it, it will not only help them as individuals, but also the institute and its service to the community, which can start from including the immediate surroundings and partner organizations, but may further be developed until reaching out to other institutes of education, promoting positivity even on international levels. For that reason, we would like to ensure that this new approach is evident and clearly understood by the participants and their schools, so we plan to issue a Proclamation of Positivity in which we proclaim that our schools take a stand for implementing changes towards positive education and we plan to reach out to our partner institutions to invite them to learn more about this new approach and join us in our efforts developing it further in the future.

Implementation: the activities fall into the following categories: 1. Activities that focus on the creation of the main final product, our guide on Positive Education based on two years of research and cooperation Therefore, there will be 5 online training sessions, which take place 60 days prior to the LTTA events. All e-learning courses cover the topics of psychological well-being, flourishing and psychological resources, with a special focus on school achievement and high performance. The content of the 5 modules are built around the PERMA model of Seligman and cover the five main elements of well-being: (1) positive emotions, (2) engagement, (3) positive relations, (4) meaning and (5) accomplishment. The topics also include the main concepts of positive psychology: wellbeing and character strengths. The courses can be completed independently of each other; they can be offered to participants separately or in any relevant combination according to personal or target group’s needs. However, they are all based on positive psychology and the wellbeing principles, and their order (from 1 to 5) reflect a logical structure of the PERMA model. Readings and videos can be varied due to the target group’s special interest, a different reading material is needed for teachers, parents and school leaders. The courses are strongly based on self-reflection and the interpretation of own experiences, require personal involvement, and the relevant theoretical background is built up from the findings of participants’ individual e-learning activity, and the realtime discussion (online or contact) is an essential part of the modules as it provides an opportunity to share and digest the course material. The short assignments of the courses serve as practical examples of planned students’ tasks and activities. By the end of the course, participants will be able to interpret the relevant concepts, understand their functioning and apply them in a classroom context. The related LTTA events will serve the purpose of testing the learnt ideas, concepts that take shape in the form of educational activities with students who act as international pilot groups. The activities will cover various fields of school education, such as English/foreign language learning, IT, P.E., Science, Environmental studies, Social studies, Psychology, Biology, History etc. 2. Activities that aim at dissemination and followup of project results, such as -Erasmus + space presentation panel -articles in schools’ magazines - logo, posters, brochure and fliers -E-learning platform shared -meetings with students, teachers, parents - sharing results with other schools in the same chain of schools, directorate, educational center - meetings at City Hall, Library - Career Days - Open School Days, organized in schools - logo, posters, pliable and fliers - E-learning platform based on the training course - Social Media appearances - Digital and Social Media portfolios accomplished - local media articles and interviews all throughout project; Social Media’s importance in youngster’s lives being so prevalent in all partner countries, the information brought by this project will have a powerful impact on local community and wider lifelong learning community being received with interest - E-learning platform - posters, fliers - visits to different schools in the department; project teams (students and teachers alike) will present projects’ activities and end products, - pedagogic and specialty meetings of teachers, form masters, educational counselors, 3. Activities that are to monitor and supervise proper implementation of tasks and duties Here, key concepts are activities that relate to communication within and outside of the partnership (e.g. with National Agencies), the Evaluation Program that is to measure the quality and quantity of implementation, and impact of the partnership, and Transnational meetings for coordinators that take place 2 times during the project.

Results: the following final outcomes and results will be produced by the end of the 24-month cooperation: - creation, participation and completion of a training course for staff involved on the five elements of the PERMA model. The training course will include the following components: theoretical input on the sub elements, how they affect the age group in focus (secondary school students aged 14-19), gives sample activities, based on which at the end of each training session the participating staff will produce more activities (at least 2/group). - professional educational teaching resources in printed and electronic versions: sample lesson plans with materials included, field observation sheets, measurement classifications, description and methods - creation of Proclamation of Positivity, which is to represent European Unity and responsible, active citizenship in this field with the opportunity for open online registration thus establishing a database for our dissemination activities. The Proclamation will be a strong statement on claiming back positivity in school around Europe. - 6 language dictionary on the topic in printed and electronic versions, the latter is part of our website that can be developed in the project period. All the findings, activities, lesson plans and project results will be uploaded to the project’s own website, the Erasmus+ project results platform and eTwinning as well. A project YouTube channel will inform the public about our activities through students’ Vlog ‘10 positive things I learnt in...’ to illustrate the visited places. We are going to create a Guide to Well-being Booklet with lesson/activity plans described here, suggestions for class activities, psychology tests and travel diaries. The project is completely established on the basis of creating an innovative and multidisciplinary teaching material that is proven and justified by the international partnership in an authentic way. The following criteria details our goals implemented: 1. The host countries will gather the educational resources (lesson plans, task sheets, test sheets etc.) prior to the meetings in accordance with the idea behind the project. The activities are the result of each training session 60 days prior to the meeting on the given sub element of well-being. The hosting school will be in charge of the testing of the newly created materials/activities. 2. The partners prove and justify the educational resources which were created in advance in the first one or two days of each project meetings. This all happens with consideration of the facilities of the host school. This is to take place under the management of the hosting school by proofreading and trying the previously created lesson plans, tasks etc. This is a way of quality management, namely to provide schools and other target groups a proven and tried teaching resource for educational purposes. 3. During the international meetings partners improve and supplement the resources based on the feedback of students. 4. The LTTA events and Transnational meetings are also used to deal with other major goals of the application, including: - supervision of our web site, and setting goals for improvement for the next meeting - supervision of the 6 language dictionary on the topic, and setting goals for improvement for the next meeting (suggestions for new vocabulary items based on consensus) - presentation of ready multimedia materials, setting the concept of them based on consensus (contents, length, etc.). 5. The outcomes, teaching materials finalized at the meetings will be tested at each school’s own premises in one month after the meetings. The fact of the trial and its effects will be documented and shared with partners. This is also a way of quality management to prove that the results justify the international partnership.