During the development of our project all participant institutions will encourage everyone to realize the importance of personal development, to make steps towards developing key skills, taking on personal challenges and reflecting on their own progress. Through different activities, interaction and exchange we will motivate our students/pupils to understand how their new skills will be used in everyday life in their countries and other countries in Europe. In this way they will also learn to accept customs, culture, and heritage to see that we are the same even in our differences. They will be motivated to learn foreign languages for effective communication. Seven schools from different European countries will participate in the project. The partners are already involved in an Etwinning project to get to know each other better and also for choosing the project theme. After researching students' comments and suggested activities it was decided to have the project theme of 'Personal Development'. All the schools have SEN students in their school and the coordinator school is a specialized school for SEN students. Almost all the schools are based in socially disadvantaged areas. So it is very important for the students in these schools to participate in this kind of project to be more open, self confident and tolerant.Students will develop the activities within their school subjects during regular classes and also some extra-curricular activities may take place. Teachers from different subjects and students from different classes will be involved to allow a wide representation of activities.The results and process of the project will be evaluated by monitoring, feedback, internal and external evaluation according to the principles of Total Quality Management. By exchanging reports, pictures, videos and products, the students and also the staff will become more aware of the cultural similarities and differences between themselves and people from other countries and increase their ability to communicate more effectively with each other. The project theme will become an integral part of schools' curricula not only for two years of the project, but that will also last after the financed period. Articles concerning the partnership will be published in local/regional newspapers and on local/regional websites. A project website/blog will be created to put the news, results and project progress information on the Internet. Project results and activities will be made available to the parents during the parents' meetings at schools. The project results will be disseminated as wide as possible. The partner schools will work together on eTwinning platform Twinspace, develop the activities and create new tasks even after the end of the EU funding. Finally, the staff can compare their students' attitudes towards learning new things and exchange ideas how to encourage teenagers to become more conscious participants of the educational process in the future.
Research shows that most schools focus purely on academic progress and exam results, yet there is a growing argument among educators, policy-makers that schools should produce students who can not only achieve academic success but also have the ability to work socially and emotionally with others from diverse backgrounds and to practise healthy and considered lifestyles as well as behaving responsibly and respectfully. Blum & Libbey claim that many students lack social-emotional competencies and become less connected to school affecting academic performance, behaviour and health. Benson indicated that 35% of surveyed students reported that they lacked social competencies such as empathy, decision making and conflict resolution skills. With this in mind our project was to focus on personal development to bring out students' abilities and powers to make themselves aware of their inner selves and to become more confident to face the outside world and highlight the importance that their time in school should also be about the process of understanding and developing themselves in order to achieve their full potential.The topic of personal development was instantly identified as a way to support students to develop their interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, increase their social-emotional competencies to better understand themselves, develop skills to handle stress, adversity and change, learn how to set goals and be resilient to follow them through, raise self-confidence and self-esteem through trying new and challenging activities and simultaneously develop self help skills and an understanding of cultural diversity and tolerance of those who are deemed to be different either by colour, creed or disability. Through different activities, interaction and exchange we motivated our students to understand how their new skills will be used in everyday life in their countries and other countries in Europe.and be motivated to learn foreign languages for effective communication Seven state maintained schools (6 mainstream and 1 SEN school) from different European countries participated in this project. All schools are situated in socially disadvantaged and economically deprived regions and thus it was very important for the students to realise the importance of personal development, to make steps towards developing key skills, take on personal challenges and reflect on their own progress.The theme was an integral part of schools' curricula throughout and continued beyond the financed period. Another aim was to provide inclusive opportunities for all students, irrespective of academic ability. All schools have students with learning difficulties and so this combination of partners allowed the UK specialist school to support the six mainstream schools to develop new skills, attitudes and approaches to working with students with SEN in their individual settings alongside sharing specialist technologies to assist students with learning difficulties. The project's activities were selected from numerous modules that comprised various nationally recognised Personal Development accreditation and were selected by students and staff as to which they believed would be most beneficial and achievable in the initial 24 months timeframe The modules chosen were 1) Improving confidence and self-esteem/ Self-belief techniques; power of thoughts. 2) Identity and Cultural Diversity, Beliefs and values/ Respecting Others, 3) Internet safety/ Cyber bullying, 4) Individual Rights & Responsibilities, 5) Personal Challenges / Working towards goals, 6) First Aid, 7) Community Action/ Volunteering /Working as Part of a Group, 8) Environmental Awareness, 9) Using Technology in Home/Community, 10) Managing stress/ anxiety, 11) Communication (including signing), 12) Developing ICT skills and 13) Managing social relationships. All of these modules were delivered according to the need of each partner school and the different approaches are combined in an electronic flip-book which summarises the activities of the project. The impact from this project could be seen by increased data achievement ( Language & ICT), accreditation gained (where appropriate), reduced number of behavioral incidents as students dealt with situations better, improved attendance, students' knowledge and awareness of various topics increased which was demonstrated through discussions, written articles or videos and students recognising the need to find ways to relax and de-stress and to be confident in social situations for career opportunities and life in general. Articles concerning the partnership were published in local/regional newspapers and on local/regional websites and social media pages. Finally, staff were able to compare their students' attitudes towards learning new things and exchange ideas as to how to encourage teenagers to become more conscious participants of the educational process in the future.