Emotional intelligence affects people's physical and mental health, their relationships with others, and is inextricably linked both to their personal realization and to their successful professional performance, especially in the human-to-human sphere. Successful people who have achieved significant professional success have a high level of development of their emotional intelligence. It provides them with the necessary inner resilience to deal with stress and problems. The main goal of our project was: acquiring competencies and skills for emotional awareness and ability to control and manage emotions. The specific goals were: understanding the importance of emotional intelligence in the context of modern education and workplace; learning how to manage our emotions and the emotions of others; learning how to avoid and resolve conflicts using 'social and emotional learning' skills (SEL); improving the language competences of the participants. The main and specific goals of the project were related to the identified needs of our school, to the Strategy and the European Development Plan.
The strategic goals of Professor Ivan Batakliev School are to provide quality and affordable education and upbringing, successfully combining the best of school traditions with European dimensions. In recent years we have seen an alarming trend of increasing aggression, alienation and a lack of trust and security in the environment surrounding adolescents. The fact that young people develop a tolerance for violence and rarely react critically to it is also worrying. Often the object of aggression are not only the students, but also the teachers themselves. This affects teachers’ health, personal and professional career and motivation, behavior in classrooms and attitude towards learners. Another dangerous trend is the decrease in age - if 5 years ago we were talking about acts of violence among lower-secondary school students, now the problem stands out even among the first grade pupils. Our adequate response should be to build and develop the emotional intelligence of each one of us. This main emphasis in our work /emotionally balanced teachers and students/ motivated us to participate in the training course „EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: IDENTIFY, HARNESS & MANAGE EMOTIONS“.