Mind Matters Erasmus Project

Project Title

Mind Matters

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: Health and wellbeing; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

When working together on their former project “Youth and Healthy Habits” the team partners from Germany (Kiel), France (Lorient) and Estonia (Pärnu) found out that, though they were trying to teach healthy habits, mental stress among students had still increased. A new partner from Spain (Churriana de la Vega) we successfully worked together with in former projects, mentioned that they had similar problems and that they wanted to take part in the new project.
In order to address this problem all partners submitted a survey among students which clearly showed students´ worries about their performance in school, their future, and their problems dealing with stress.
Our key objective in this project was to increase the participants´ resilience. We planned to identify causes and consequences of stress and develop and try out coping strategies, using different working methods and (digital) tools during our project.
As a starting point, the students filled in a comprehensive survey on stress in their everyday lives. They also did research on causes and consequences of stress, coping strategies and important technical terms – the results of this research were presented during the meeting in Churriana (C9), and afterwards the students created Kahoot quizzes on what they had learned. During this meeting, we also carried out the logo contest to choose a logo for the project, and we tried out Flamenco dancing and sensual hiking as possible stress-reducing activities and mindfulness sessions.
At our second meeting in Kiel, the students analysed the survey results and presented them, thus gaining an insight on the causes and consequences of stress at the four partnering schools, and practising presentation skills. There was a seminar on stress caused by social media and students had the opportunity to try out different physical activities that might reduce stress. In another workshop, the students prepared and acted role plays in which they had to deal with different stressful situations.
In the time between this meeting and the next one in Lorient in March 2020, the students at each school carried out interviews with different people who deal with stress or help people in stressful situations in their jobs.
In January 2020, two students from each school went to either Kiel or Lorient on a long-term mobility to get to know school life and daily life in our partner country. They compared their experiences at their host school to their daily life at home, also looking at aspects that they saw as less or more stressful than their life at home.
This was originally meant to be the starting point for developing a less stressful school environment, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were forced to halt our work on the MIND MATTERS project in March 2020.
Schools in Germany and also in some of the partner countries were closed, and so we decided to end the long-term mobility a week early, making sure that all students could return home to their families before stricter regulations on travel began. We also had to cancel the meeting planned for March 2020 in Lorient, because travelling with students was not allowed at this time.
The uncertain situation during the following months kept us from continuing the project, and in autumn 2020 we decided that it would not make sense to continue the MIND MATTERS project after it had been paused for so long – many of the students who had been involved in the first meetings had already graduated from school, and travelling as well as working with mixed groups of students from different classes was not possible. We decided that it would be best to end the project unfinished, because the obstacles to continuing it seemed too great.

Project Website

https://mindmatters.erasmusmobility.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 86050 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ricarda Huch Schule & Country: DE

Project Partners

• IES FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
• Pärnu Raeküla Kool
• Groupe scolaire Saint-Louis – Notre Dame de La Paix Ogec du Levant