As stated above the project objectives are embedded in the topic of mental health and well-being and are closely related to European priorities of strengthening the profile of the teaching profession by supporting teachers with up to date methodology to respond to daily challenges; and ensure the continuous professional development. First of all we wished to find efficient ways to prevent and handle mental health challenges that had been brought along by the pandemic, that the isolation and out of joint conditions the repeated lockdowns had resulted in. We tried to achieve to be able to answer the specific questions of how to maintain a positive attitude and manage ones’ life in times of crisis; how to stay mentally and psychologically balanced; and how to deal with post-traumatic stress. We concluded that there must be methods that could be used in schools to improve students’ and educators’ well-being and mental health. We decided to experiment with 8 methods that not only the participants schools but any institution, any educator could benefit from in the long run. The methods we sought had to be evidence based and relevant to the students’ needs.
Originally a delegation from Akureyri Junior College would have visited Karolyi School before the pandemic. The two institutions have kept in touch during the lockdown periods and developed a friendly-professional relation. We realised how challenging it had become to maintain an optimistic attitude, monitor students’ wellbeing while ”meeting” exclusively online. We, teachers and our students faced serious challenges and had urgent needs that seemed to be very similar. We have decided to transform our anxiety and discomfort into an action-plan with practical objectives. This is how our project came to being. We have defined the objectives and narrowed down the scope of the cooperation to the most urgent ones. Student surveys launched in our schools have justified our actual needs. These we have converted into project objectives. Thus the needs-objectives addressed were: to improve our students’ and the teachers’ mental health and well-being during and after times of crisis. We aimed to find answers to the questions of how to maintain a positive attitude and manage one's' life, stay mentally, psychologically balanced and deal with post-traumatic stress. We have defined 8 methods to experiment with during the 20-moth cooperation.