"Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet.Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don´t just give up." Stephen Hawking This quote accurately reflects the idea of our school partnership project. Also in the title "The TOWER of EXPECTATIONS" is the idea of an innovative and inclusive concept of the whole project. One of "The Tower of Expectations" project aims is to encourage each partner’s school and local community to deal with culture heritage joints and perform concrete actions to improve the knowledge and its use in each school, by working together in promoting exchange of cultural and historic values of the participating countries. The second main objective is training of teachers in the field of emotional education. Very often, children don't have enough of resources and skills to cope with various emotionally challenging situations, so they withdraw, feeling judged, frustrated and inferior. In order to be able to intervene adequately, all teachers should undergo a emotional literacy training programme. Through the scientific research of school teams composed of pupils and teachers, we want to dive into the world of science and art, history and present, and in these waters we would like to find common moments, personalities, stories and experiences that make us a common European community. Themes - Science and Inventors, Composers, Music and Dance, Literature and Writers, Architecture and Architects, Games, Festivities and Cultural Heritage - are diverse, but all relate to everyday life, and pupils will find them interesting, and participating in activities empowering. We will put the findings and outputs of our research into a skyscraper (TOWER) that will be continually built in each school for two years independently, but will be a common unifying symbol of our project. The skyscraper is a reflection of the rapidly evolving world, where modern digital technologies, robotics and electronics and core human abilities and skills are inevitably intertwined. The plurality of floors offers enough space for project outcomes and results. At the end of the project, it will be visible how high we built it, why, and what the individual floors hide. There is a team of teachers and pupils, who have participated in previous projects where we have acquired new skills, especially in terms of competences like teamwork, presentation ability, ability to communicate in a foreign language, ability to use ICT and work skills. Logical thinking and situation appraisal developed through games are other supportive competencies. In this project will be included 6 schools, 2900 pupils and 240 teachers. 1 of partner schools - Croatian - is a kindergarten. Nevertheless, it will work on all planned activities that will be adapted for the level of pre-primary education. In this school, experience and work of a highly educated team of teachers and a school psychologist in field of emotional education is one of the guarantees in achieving the project objective - the training of teachers in the area of emotional education and its application to everyday work practice. Three other partner schools combine pre-primary and primary education. 2 schools provide elementary education for pupils aged 6 to 14-15 years. Mobility will not involve children from Croatian kindergarten because of their age, as well as pupils from a Turkish school where the Erasmus+ national rules do not allow for the mobility of children under 12 years of age. The project aims can be divided into following goals: CHANGE ATTITUDES - Observing and exploring other countries culture heritage by visiting, experiencing personally, through Internet research and ICT - Establishing an International group of pupils from all partner schools - Exchange, compare and discuss results of research from partner schools TEACH EACH OTHERS - Making presentations (for visits to other countries). - Create the Big Map with common architecture buildings. - Make powerpoint presentations (festivities, common days). - Make photo albums. - Make brochures (methodical guide, games). - Make exhibitions (2 moving exhibitions - project logo pictures, fact files of inventors). - Make a songs and dances book (with CD). - Play the stories (and make a video compilation). - Play the games (and make a video compilation). RAISE AWARENESS - Learn about diverse and common cultural heritage. - Learn how to be emotional balanced and tolerant person. - Show pupils what they can do in small steps so they understand that even small steps can contribute to a meaningful improvement of life. - Staff involved in project will include new knowledge and skills in their daily work. We have rather big EXPECTATIONS from the project, but we expect that after two years of cooperation we will fulfil them all.
"The TOWER of EXPECTATIONS" project was a partnership between The Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Spain (Mallorca), Turkey and Italy. One of the project aims was to encourage each partner’s school and local community to deal with culture heritage joints and perform concrete actions to improve the knowledge and its use in each school, by working together in promoting exchange of cultural and historic values of the participating countries. The second main objective was improving various competencies of students and teachers. The training of teachers was especially in the field of emotional education. All teachers who participated in the project activities attended education about emotional literacy in two schools that provided short-term training programmes (Croatia, Turkey). The rest of the partner schools enhanced their curriculum with various emotional educational tips and didactic material for enhancing emotional literacy, and shared and presented that with partner schools during mobilities and/or online meetings (because of the pandemic Covid – 19). That way, teachers from partner schools could pass on new knowledge and skills and implement it in their school’s work and curriculum. Through the research of school teams composed of pupils and teachers, we worked on these planned topics: Science and Inventors, Composers, Music and Dance, Literature and Writers, Architecture and Architects, Games, Festivities and Cultural Heritage, which all related to everyday life and pupils found them interesting and empowering. At each school we put the findings and outputs of our research into a skyscraper (TOWER) that was continually built for three years during the project, and that skyscraper was a „first“ common unifying symbol of our project. The skyscraper was a symbol of the rapidly evolving world, where modern digital technologies, robotics and electronics and core human abilities and skills are inevitably intertwined. The plurality of 6 floors (for 6 topics/partner schools) offered enough space for project outcomes and results. The team of teachers and pupils demonstrated during the project the ability and competences like teamwork, presentation ability, ability to communicate in a foreign language, ability to use ICT and work skills. This project included 6 schools, 2500 pupils (actively 400, the rest passively) and 200 teachers (actively 70, the rest passively). In Croatian school – kindergarten - all planned activities were adapted for the level of pre-primary education. This school with the experience and work of a highly educated team and a school psychologist educated in the field of emotional literacy was a leader of the teachers training in the area of emotional literacy and its application to everyday work practice. Mobilities There were 6 planned mobilities, only 4 were implemented. Two mobilities could not be carried out due to the Covid -19 pandemic, not allowed travelling and announced lockdowns, which started just before our 5th meeting in Italy (16th – 20th March 2020). Children from the Croatian school did not take part in the mobility, because of their age, as well as pupils from a Turkish school where the Erasmus+ national rules do not allow for the mobility of children under 12 years of age. We wanted to secure the rest of two mobilities (Italian and Mallorcan school) in the third year of the project (2020/2021), but it was not possible due to various measures at individual schools or thanks to online learning at some of the partner schools. The project website is available at http://project-tower.eu, where photos, activities and products etc. are presented. At the end of the report, I would like to say that the project was successful, despite the difficulties caused by the Covid - 19 pandemic. We managed to implement all planned tasks and outputs, only it was not possible to implement two mobilities. We hope that the project helped increase the children's social and emotional skills, and also their knowledge in many areas of both local and European context.