The project brings together 8 partners and several associated partners from Netherlands, Finland, UK, Spain, Portugal and Greece representing vocational education and training, higher education and SMEs. The unique blend of experience and diversity of the project partnership group ensures a critical and supportive approach to the project. Helping students drop their negative baggage and overcoming skills mismatches, creating new and innovative ways of supporting and encouraging students to take ownership of their learning takes time and a change in existing attitudes. This is why the length of this project is 3 years during which 6 transnational meetings and a teacher training event will be held. Many VET students are going through big personal battles, they are trying to find their place and their self-worth. This creates a kind of survival mode so that there is no room for conscious participation in the education provided at the school. School can however be life-changing to these students as it gives them time and opportunity to establish social contacts and sometimes even an escape from home. Teachers, teacher’s assistants, job coaches, study coaches (= teachers) who are openminded and non-judgemental can challenge students in a positive way and help them drop their baggage. Dropping the baggage aims to improve students´ 21st century skills in a way that helps them set goals, invest in their future and help them rethink on how they look at themselves. Dropping the baggage is a project that will focus on developing tools that will help teachers encourage students to drop their negative baggage, take ownership of their learning and develop hidden strengths that will help them succeed in working life and in life in general. The project aims to change existing mindsets, ways of educating and teaching and making teachers facilitators of learning in a way that encourages students to open their minds to the way they look at their own role in the learning process. Within the project we will develop and open up one intellectual output for the wider audience. The output is called S.C.R.E.A.M! – How to help VET students drop their baggage and invest in their future through the S.C.R.E.A.M.!-method. The output will be developed as a web-page allowing all interested parties to implement and use it once it is ready. The manual will help change restrictive and judgmental attitudes of students towards more openminded and inclusive. By showing teachers what positive impacts collaboration, respect and motivation has on students will help teachers encourage students to succeed in life. Dropping the Baggage will result in a change when it comes to the approach of learning. The persons involved in educating VET students will welcome a more holistic approach in which the social context and the problems in which the students find themselves is taken into consideration when setting up personal study plans and when setting aims for school performance. A change of attitude among those involved in educating VET students will occur and this will make students who carry baggage heard and understood, making the baggage more manageable and enable them to graduate and obtain a degree. The online manual will be available in Dutch, English, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portugeese and Greek on internet towards the end of the project. The target group and potential beneficiaries are students, VET providers, teachers, job coaches and youth workers and other stakeholders who play a role in educating VET students. Project Management and Implementation are important tasks within the project. A steering committee consisting of one representative/core partner, will collaborate virtually on tasks relating to management and implementation. Money allocated for project management and implementation will be divided between the following actions: a) Project administration and management, b) Dissemination activities and c) Implementation and sustainability. To increase sustainability and impact, the participants are committed to disseminate the project through various channels (e.g. national, European and international networks and a joint Multiplier Event and Multipliers Events held in each partner country). The Cronona virus showed us how fragile our education system is and gave us proof that those students who have high self-esteem and a good support system will be able to succeed in their studies when the methodologies of teaching changes suddenly. However students with low self-esteem and poor support systems were left stranded and their learning comes to a standstill. The Corona virus showed us how important it is to set up learning networks that provides students at risk of dropping out with the support and encouragement they need. As the situation is today the Corona virus has resulted in unhealthy, unequal and unfair situations when it comes to learning and keeping up with curricula.
The main aim of Dropping the Baggage was to raise awareness among educators and students of the baggage they carry with them to school. We wanted to help them recognize and come to terms with this baggage. To help them do this our aim was to create an online manual in which we collected information, lifted concrete examples, gave tips on how to recognize/come to terms with baggage. To help students (and educators) overcome baggage we want to highlight the importance of peer support and support networks consisting of e.g. teachers, counsellors, social-/youth workers. Our aim was to develop tools and materials that would be included in our S.C.R.E.A.M! manual (https://droppingthebaggage.eu/courses/s-c-r-e-a-m-manual/) and that would encourage, support and motivate students at risk of dropping out of education to stay and get a VET degree. Early school leaving was not a new problem and a lot had been done to provide educators with tools to support students to stay in VET. However, we felt that none of the previous materials developed had taken into consideration the hidden agendas, non-visible (negative) baggage that students and teachers carry with them and how this affects the students´ chances of succeeding in studies and life.
The partners of Dropping the Baggage had noticed that there was a relatively high degree of students failing in school and who showed tendencies of dropping out unless certain support systems were set up. We had done small scale research (looked at statistics, spoken with various stakeholders etc) to learn about the current situations and as most of the partners worked in VET schools or with youngsters we had been able to observe that students showed often showed tendencies to drop out or fail because they felt that was expected of them, or because they felt isolated and lacked the support and safety of peers and educators. We noticed that many of these students were carrying what we call negative baggage on their shoulders and that this baggage made them act and be perceived by educators as being indifferent or unmotivated. The baggage they carry is something that isn't recognized and dealt with in the school environment. We wanted to create something that would help educators become aware of this baggage and give them knowledge, tips and examples on how to help students become aware of their baggage, how the baggage effects them and how to come to terms and maybe even make the negative baggage into something positive.