Helping our students to manage their emotions better is our highest aim and latest research has shwon that this can be done via experiences based on human-animal interactio; these experiences have the great potential of teaching indirectly and whilst having fun, the child, adolescent or young adult to self-regulate their interactions and re-adjust their position within a communicational act or getting more productive and positive relationships in the long run. By managing their emotions and where they come from, they automatically correct themeselves so in time they increase their chances of high (academic) achievement because they no longer have to fight psychological negative thoughts or emotionally harmful ideas that they used to associate themselves with.After having identified all these social and emotional needs among our students (after having applied a survey whose results and questions are uploaded in the annexes), the six partner schools decided that the most tactful way to overcome these barriers will be by resorting to something they all resonate with: animal interaction.By engaging our students in tasks which are based on environmental issues, or are ICT-related and by encouraging our students to become more efficient communicators (using English, of course), our project aims at empowering the students from different countries to become voices for the rights of the animals, to master social dialogue techniques and share their thoughts on a theme in which they are very interested. PRET-A-PET activities are an opportunity for them to open up, to talk about their favourite animals, to share videos and to use their communication abilities in a foreign language but still enjoy a great conversation, inspite of all differences of opinion, because we learn from the animals how to be humane and positive, tolerant and to break away from prejudice or passivity, or even better to find in ourselves the strengh to carry on. Therefore, it is not a project which is only student-oriented but the whole community, teachers and parents included, is encouraged to be more empathetic, to fight stress and find solutions for any type of problem via problem-solving collaboration.PRET-A-PET addresses topics which focus on developing transversal competences in our learners (competences that they will make use of throughout all their lives: biology, cognitive, social interpersonal competencies, etc.) so that they become more motivated and empowered to reach their full potential as autonomous learners.The novelty of our project lies in the fact that we will implement open education and non-formal techniques (such as Theatre Forum, social dialogue, etc.) which are elements rather used by non-profit organizations. Moreover, task performace will be assessed based on an innovative concept, Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and it will take into consideration skills that our students will not have been aware of initially that they should practice on in view of acceeding jobs that will belong to the future economies; those workplace will require them to be flexible and learn continuously in order to respond to the new requirements. Basically, we will teach our students to get ready to acquire skills which have not emerged on the market. These skills are referred to as 21st centrury skills.As for the activities and products envisaged by the project, one of the most impressive one is our intellectual output also called the "Emotional First Aid Kit" which appears to be a box of surprise and delight for children and youngsters, a synaesthetic box that will set them on a journey ("inside out") to explore their emotions and to understand their reactions better; each kit contains a story illustrated with pictures and a surprise set of realia that will connect them right to the story through all their senses.
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.