Emotional intelligence is our ability to recognize emotions in ourselves and others, to understand their effect, and to use that knowledge to guide our thoughts and behaviors. Because emotional intelligent people tend to get along better with others and be more empathetic and compassionate, they are likely to be more successful compared to their counterparts. Thus it is more than vital to start to talk about emotional intelligence since primary education, not only for training children but also to train teachers and parents that are fundamental figures in the children emotional development. It is essentially a different way to be smart because it is “the capacity to be aware of, control- express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically”. People with higher emotional intelligence are also more adaptable to change and more capable of dealing with requests from the contexts. Most recent approaches stress the importance of socio-emotional learning (SEL) and education for a positive youth development. p.s. SMILE will aim to balance between subject knowledge and education. All around Europe education is more focused on the knowledge transfer rather than to help children to develop skills that are necessary for a better integration in society and to be successful in any future field in life. The project conforms with the aim of the EU to form a unified European front against the problems that face societies, achieving the European goal to promote peace, its values and mostly the well-being of its citizens, including the crucial but often forgotten emotional well-being. The project aims to contribute in building emotionally stable, inclusive and healthy communities in primary education institutions where significant adults, namely parents and teachers, reach a better understanding of what is education, take care of their own socio-emotional functioning and support its development in children. That is a fluorishing community result from a joint capacity building process of parents, teachers and children in both educational and daily life contexts. OBJECTIVES -Throughout the delivery of the intellectual outputs, empowering significantly adults in their living community (namely teachers and parents)with effective tools to more successfully guide socio-emotional development of their children. -Improving throughout training primary schools’ teachers’ capability to successfully teach and develop children's social and emotional competences. -Thanks to the activities covering the different components of SEL, verify the efficacy of the program to develop in children essential socio-emotional skills to better understand themselves and their classmates and orient their behavior. -Creating guidelines for teachers on SEL in order to provide them with necessary knowledge and skills to refer to SEL during their teaching activities. -Creating materials for SEL teaching that will be available on the online platform and disseminated across participating countries. -Raise awareness in the local community and also in the European community about the importance of social and emotional education for children since an early stage (primary school). ACTIVITIES p.s. SMILE will produce 4 Intellectual Outputs: IO1:Methodological material for SEL competences development. Partnership will create a the state of the art report for the countries involved in the partnership. These will be used for setting the guidelines to produce the methodological material regarding SEL. This will provide the information about SEL competences, their importance, their development possibilities, education of SEL for kids. The material will result in an e-book that will be available online with open access. As well we'll provide guidelines on how to integrate SEL activities in formal and non-formal education. Non-formal education program for SEL competences development will be provided by each partner country. IO2:Creation of 1 training method for teachers that then will train the children on SEL dimensions. The training will be then administered by the partners to the teachers in each partner country. There will be then a piloting activity developed among a whole academic year in which the teachers will use the developed training method with their classes to help pupils developing SEL dimensions. IO3:Developing of an App for adults (parents, teachers) guiding them through SEL components and competences and setting daily activities for them to better develop their emotional potential and improve themselves. IO4:The training method created in IO2 will be evaluated and modified according to that, then will be adapted for becoming an e-learning platform. All project activities, results and outcomes are all aimed to make teachers, parents, pupils and European community more aware of the importance of SEL and how to properly develop and use it.
The project aims to develop teachers’ knowledge and ability to understand and incorporate the socio-emotional education in their school curricula, to develop children skills they need to integrate into society and be successful in any area of their future life. The project pursued the following objectives: -Throughout the delivery of the intellectual outputs, empowering significantly adults in their living community (namely teachers and parents) with effective tools to more successfully guide socioemotional development of their children. -Improving throughout training primary schools’ teachers’ capability to successfully teach and develop children's social and emotional competences. -Thanks to the activities covering the different components of SEL, verify the efficacy of the program to develop in children essential socio-emotional skills to better understand themselves and their classmates and orient their behavior. -Creating guidelines for teachers on SEL in order to provide them with necessary knowledge and skills to refer to SEL during their teaching activities. -Creating materials for SEL teaching that will be available on the online platform and disseminated across participating countries. -Raise awareness in the local community and also in the European community about the importance of social and emotional education for children since an early stage (primary school).
The project p.s.SMILE was developed starting from recognizing a deficiency in European education in socio-emotional learning (SEL), which has been recognized for over 25 years as one of the crucial aspects of children's cognitive, social and emotional development. Research has highlighted the need for strengthening SEL within European schools, where sometimes it is implemented according to national guidelines, and other times it is adopted as a mental health practice at the teachers' discretion, who often felt lack adequate skills to teach it. Another aspect highlighted by academic research is the centrality of parents in the socio-emotional development of their children. Despite this fact, community building is still a weak part in the educational programs implemented in many schools and schools are looking for the methods how to encourange parentsto be more actively involved into school process. Taking into account all these aspects, the project aimed to respond to the shortcomings of teachers in SEL, the lack of parental involvement in SEL-related activities, and the absence of a shared EU practice for SEL.