Protect-Respect-Educate-Treat Animals and People with Empathy and Tenderness Erasmus Project

Project Title

Protect-Respect-Educate-Treat Animals and People with Empathy and Tenderness

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 : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Helping our students to manage their emotions better was our highest aim and our biggest achievement: due to the project activities involving animal-human interaction, interpersonal communication, organisational skills development, decision-making instances and open education learning practices, improvement was recorded in important sectors such as self-regulation and self-management, negotiation and communication skills, as well as characteristics of self-control. All these positive outcomes, which were measured by collecting the results of the final survey and comparing the numbers to the ones gathered from the initial survey or as shown in the feedback sheets, were accompanied by a positive change in the general learning behaviour of the students as well as their social relations, followed also by a rise in their academic achievement level, especially in the fields of English, sciences and technology.

By engaging our students in tasks which were based on environmental issues, or were ICT-related, and by encouraging them to become more efficient communicators, especially in the English language, our project managed to empower the students involved, from different countries and schools, and to become the voice of the animals on matters such as animal rights, to master social dialogue techniques and share their thoughts on themes in which they showed a common interest.

PRET-A-PET activities were an opportunity for them to expand their cultural horizons, to be more open-minded and culturally sensitive, to research and talk about their favourite animals, to share videos and to use their communication abilities in a foreign language, orally or online/ in an electronic medium. From the animals they learned how important it is to be humane and they understood why they should be more positive, tolerant and to break away from prejudice or passivity, and for the sake of the animals they succeeded to discover in themselves the strength to carry on, inspite of challenges and difficulties.

Therefore, it was not a project which was only student-oriented, but involved the whole community, including teachers, parents, students’ friends and the local community: throughout key PRET-A-PET activities they were all encouraged to be more empathetic, to make a difference and to look for solutions to a wide variety of problems via problem-solving collaborative gatherings. PRET-A-PET addressed topics which focused on developing transversal competencies in learners (competencies that they would make use of throughout all their lives: biology-related abilities, cognitive skills, high-order thinking, social regulation, interpersonal competencies, learning autonomy) so that they were able to become more motivated as learners, but also as world citizens: throughout the project, more and more students felt empowered to reach their full potential and were encouraged to become autonomous learners.

The novelty of our project lies in the fact that we implemented open education and non-formal techniques (such as Theatre Forum, social dialogue, etc.) which were elements embraced by students with much excitement or at least curiosity and inquisitiveness, breaking away from common educational practices. Moreover, task performace was assessed according to novel parametres, belonging to the social and the cognitive dimensions, a bidimensional scale that helped teachers locate the ZPDs of the most active students. In this way, students were encouraged to build up the skills that they hadn’t been initially aware of and to gain experience in practices that they would need on their way to acceeding jobs from the markets of the future economies; those workplaces would require them to be flexible and learn continuously in order to respond to periodically renewing requirements. Basically, we taught students to get ready to acquire skills which might not seem dominant in the immediate time and to anticipate what could be used in their future jobs; most importantly, they got used to staying open to cutting-edge practices and not feel discouraged when dealing with new things. As for the activities and products envisaged by the project, one of the most impressive one was the “Emotional First Aid Kit” which consisted of a box full of surprise and delight for children and youngsters, a synaesthetic box that set them on a journey (“inside out”) to explore their emotions while reading Kitty’s story and to understand their reactions better; each kit contained a story illustrated with pictures and a surprise set of realia that connected them right to the story through all their senses.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 157573 Eur

Project Coordinator

ÖZEL HEDEF ORTAOKULU & Country: TR

Project Partners

• Istituto Comprensivo SAN FELE
• OGEC LPP SAINTE MARIE
• Scoala Gimnaziala Anton Pann
• MANISA ISMET INONU MESLEKI VE TEKNIK ANADOLU LISESI
• ESPERINO GYMNASIO-LYKEIAKES TAXEIS TRIKALON