Don’t Worry? Be Happy! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Don’t Worry? Be Happy!

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Health and wellbeing; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

The project „Don’t worry? Be happy!“ takes as a starting point the populism, extremism and euroscepticism that is currently haunting Europe. Some commentators have begun to use the phrase „European angst“ to describe this climate of political and economic uncertainty. Especially young people are negatively affected by bleak prospects. The negative consequences of this worrisome future is already visible in many schools, where pupils put a lot of pressure on themselves to succeed academically, which leads to rising rates of depressive symptoms and even burnout in teenagers.

Of course, we want the opposite for our pupils, namely that they are happy – and that is also the aim of our project. We – that is four schools: formatio Privatschule (Liechtenstein), IGS Rockenhausen (Germany), Tundalsskolan (Sweden) and IES Poeta Julián Andúgar (Spain) – have all been participating successfully in Erasmus Projects in the past. Three of the four schools are closely connected through past partnerships and are looking forward to working together with the new partner school from Spain. We believe that it is the right time to teach our pupils about the good life, whereas we want to pursue a two-pronged approach: One important source for a happy life can be found in our age-old traditions; the other important source is the continuous development of high quality life skills.

Every nation has its own ideas about the good life. Our partnership is especially well-suited for teaching happiness through a cultural lens, since the four schools are situated in different European countries. Unique concepts that relate to the good life can be found in all four nations. For instance, in Spain they have sobremesa – a word that describes the good time you have with people after a lovely meal. In Sweden you often hear lagom – which means „in balance“ and is often given as a piece of good advice since nothing should be done in excess. Etc. In short, the pupils will be confronted with culture-specific ideas of happiness and they will experience them through traditional activities that make life enjoyable. By doing so, we want them to discover intercultural differences and commonalities related to the good life.

Next, high quality life skills are essential for a good life – and we want to teach a broad range of these life skills to our students. One very important life skill is critical thinking. Critical thinking helps to dispel irrational fears and so will make the pupils less susceptible to extremist views and fake information. Since it is an especially powerful antidote to the scaremongering in the media, it considerably contributes to the good life. Critical thinking will be taught through discussions (like Socratic Circles) and analysing news so that their media literacy will be improved.
Another key life skill is a „can-do“-attitude. By doing exercises from Positive Psychology, we want to fill our pupils with optimism and hope. We intend to build resilience in our pupils and to boost their self-confidence. After having finished this training programme, they are going to have a strong sense of self-empowerment. Therefore they are going to be able to cope with the slings and arrows of life.
Furthermore, we are going to teach several life skills that show our students how to treat themselves and others well – among them being compassion and kindness, thankfulness. These soft skills do not only increase well-being levels (as many scientific studies have shown), they are also inherently social. As a consequence, the pupils will comprehend that for the good life we are dependent on others – on families, friends and our community.

Our learning teaching training activities will lead to several highly desirable results: The pupils will learn about different cultures of happiness; they will acquire several skills, so that they can deal successfully with life’s adversities and their happiness levels will increase. Plus, we expect two more positive effects, namely on social inclusion and good citizenship. Individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds should benefit the most from the activities. The chance to learn high quality life skills, will contribute their social inclusion. Finally, the project teaches good citizenship. Honing their critical thinking skills will make the pupils more resistant to – for example – xenophobic views. And the teaching of social skills will make them kinder and more sensitive to the plight of others.

Finally, we expect several long-term benefits. The returning pupils should be more mature and behave better. The new teaching material is going to be shared and made available to all teachers, so that it can be re-used for different occasions and diverse purposes. Last but not least the project will lay down the tracks for the future course of our schools: We believe that learning high quality life skills and caring for the well-being of our pupils must have a more central role in our future teaching efforts.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 100561,36 Eur

Project Coordinator

FORMATIO BILDUNGS – ANSTALT & Country: LI

Project Partners

• Integrierte Gesamtschule Rockenhausen
• IES POETA JULIAN ANDUGAR
• Tundalsskolan