MIRACLE SCARVES – Mindfulness, Respect, Attitude, Citizenship, Languages, Social Competence, Arts and Values in the Education of Students in the 21st Century Erasmus Project

Project Title

MIRACLE SCARVES – Mindfulness, Respect, Attitude, Citizenship, Languages, Social Competence, Arts and Values in the Education of Students in the 21st Century

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Pedagogy and didactics; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

In modern fast-paced world, many people feel empty, without a purpose and striving for something more in life. Living in today’s world full of high technology devices, the pressure of social media, busy schedules, overwhelming material goods and numerous global changes, we lose ourselves and our purpose of life. Consequently, many people feel depressed, anxious, lonely, not fitting in, not being good enough, not having enough and not doing enough. The most vulnerable part of our society are the teenagers, since they are trying to fit in this world and learn who they are. In the flood of images what life should be like, they are most likely to feel lost and inadequate. The children of today are often described as self-interested, unfocused, lazy and tough to manage on one hand, but apathetic, unmotivated and indifferent on the other hand. They have difficulties when dealing with leaders as teachers, parents and later managers at work. They want to do things they like, are meaningful to them and have a purpose, although they really cannot define the meaning and purpose. They often lack the feeling of happiness and contentment. That is why the educators as well as parents should work hard to change that in the best way they can, by building the teenagers’ self-worth, value system and providing opportunities to learn social competences and meaningful relationships. The presented project is targeting students at the ages 13 -15, since this age marks a critical time of transition and identity formation that lays the foundation for healthy and satisfactory adulthood. It is the time of learning how to deal with new emotions, changes in life, increased responsibility and a new sense of autonomy. Our project aims to highlight the strengths in our school systems in regards to forming a good value system, social competences and citizenship. As similar problems arise in almost all European countries, we want to develop a mutual European way of dealing with them by exchanging good practices and making them applicable to other situations in other countries. In order to achieve effective results and form a positive school environment, we believe studying and comparing the methods used in several countries is indispensable. It will be interesting and useful to compare different approaches to similar challenges and try to discover ways that everyone can benefit from. Moreover, as we live in times of the globalization, we strongly believe that this approach is the only right one, since the European teenagers of today are the European citizens of tomorrow. There are four countries involved in the project, that are the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Slovenia that is also the coordinator. The teachers collaborating in the project have experience in international exchange projects and are Geography, Art, IT and language teachers. The project MIRACLE SCARVES will engage with activities stimulating mindfulness, respect for oneself and others, positive attitude, good citizenship, using different languages, social competence, creativity and arts and proper values in the education of students in the 21st century. It will be divided into four intertwining themes, which are HAPPY MIND, HAPPY LIFE! (dealing with personal contentment), WE CAN! (self-confidence), THROUGH OUR EYES (dealing with proper values) and HELLO, WORLD! (dealing with languages, culture and traditions). We plan to acquire some basic statistical data on these topics by conducting international surveys. Then we will try to assess the strengths and weaknesses of our students in order to work on the encouraging school programmes aimed to improve the students’ life skills and consequently improve children’s capacity for action in conflict and stressful situations as well as empower them to cope with or maybe even prevent the most common mental disorders, like anxiety, depression and apathy. We intend to accomplish these goals by using the means of teaching mindfulness (self-esteem workshops, inspiring talks, meditation), creativity (fine arts, photography, videos, role plays, creative writing) and unity (citizenship workshops, treasure hunts around home towns, workshops on digital media addiction, international pen pals, online conferences, staying with the host families during exchanges, workshops with foreign students, encouraging team sports). The main objective is to integrate the activities with best results into the school agenda combining them with all the ongoing regular activities (special days, school events, nature schools and other projects). The main result that we expect is making the European society aware of the problems the adolescent are numerously facing nowadays, such as lack of self-confidence and optimism, low self-esteem, fear of failure and the feeling that life is meaningless. We hope to produce students with proper values, behaviours and habits that will enable a healthy, satisfying and overall long-term quality life in the future.

Project Website

https://twinspace.etwinning.net/131904/pages/page/1155702

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 103408 Eur

Project Coordinator

OS Ludvika Pliberska Maribor & Country: SI

Project Partners

• Oberschule am Buchwedel
• Oranje Nassau College
• DIVINA PASTORA