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 has 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 will be to increase the participants´ resilience. We will identify causes, consequences and strategies to cope with stress, thereby increasing students´ abilities to deal with stressful situations. The three basic steps within this process are identification, prevention and therapy. The project will enable our students to be better equipped in certain situations in their life. For example, they will increase their emotional intelligence by mastering social and emotional skills. Further, the students' well-being and balance, which are a necessary condition to improve their school performances and therefore their skills, will be strengthened. All this will reinforce their mental health in general as well as their employability and make it easier for them to get on the labour market and lead a mentally healthy life. In order to achieve these goals the following activities have been planned: - do research about resilience, internal and external causes of stress, different consequences of stress and how to cope with stress in preparation of the second workshop; - prepare and hold presentations about these topics - analyse the results of the survey carried out and visualize and present them - create and continue digital guidebooks with the help of infographics (and other software); these guidebooks will be available on the project website - design questionnaire to ask peers for feedback concerning the digital guidebooks - carry out a logo contest to choose the common project logo - use eTwinning to store and exchange the results of their work - learn how to prepare and do role plays - carry out and analyse role plays with their peers to learn about stressful situations and possible solutions/ways of coping - evaluate their school environments concerning causes of stress and create a utopian "stress-free school environment" in form of a poster - attend lectures on the impacts of media on stress, thereby learning about stress-reducing use of technological gadgets and media - create sculptures and/or paintings to visualize human emotions - learn about foreign school environments in long term mobility - informing/ learning about different cultural approaches to stress in long term exchanges - learn about and try out different activities that could help to reduce stress (sensorial hiking, yoga, sophrology, meditation, artistic activities, different sports etc.) - carry out interviews with people who do voluntary work and learn about the benefits of helping others - create quizzes on the project topic by using "jeopardy" or other learning apps - celebrate the "World Health Day" in their schools and write a report about an event related to (mental) health for their school magazine All these activities will be carried out throughout the three year time span of the project. We plan to hold two learning and teaching activities each year as well as two long term mobilities in the second year of the project. At each of the short term exchanges there will be 20 to 24 traveling participants as well as 20-24 hosting students. In addition to that there will be two students (total 8) from each country on the long term exchanges. All learning and teaching activities will be assessed by the students themselves as well as by the teachers before and after each meeting. Moreover we will develop tools to assess what the students have learned and experienced by doing the various activities. The foremost intended result is to strengthen resilience against stress among our students but also - in the long term - to include successful strategies to cope with stress into the curricula of all participating schools. By creating digital guidebooks, these may be used by all participants after the end of the project.By getting an outside look at stress-producing and reducing aspects (long term exchanges), all involved schools may get chances to improve their school environments.
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.