Preventing early school leaving through creativity

Erasmus+ and EU aims and objectives of Strategic Partnership in reponse of the COVID-19 situation, namely Partnerships for Creativity in the field of school education and the priority of skills development and inclusion through creativity and the arts. School dropout is an important issues for our society, because not only the students who leave school early are affected by this phenomenon, but also the community as a whole. On one hand, dropping out of school is determined, among other factors, by health and social problems, but on the other hand, it can also lead, among the persons concerned, to future unemployment, poverty and a higher crime rate. In the long term these factors trigger, in their turn, psychological illnesses like depression and anxiety disorder, resulting in a vicious circle, where the children of dropouts drop out of school later on. Thus, the aim of this project is to teach students and teachers how to create a positive learning environment, sustain meaningful relationships and by showing the importance of self-care for the body and mind and the use of creativity in solving problems, such as those causing school dropouts. Moreover, our students shall learn more about time management, being able to plan and control how much time they spend daily on specific activities and how to set priorities in life and get familiarize with tools and knowledge to improve their lifestyles. Through the objectives we set in order to carry on the project, we will: Increase awareness on the importance of creativity in personal development in all six schools;
Train teachers from each partner school to improve teaching methods and knowledge to stimulate and exploit students' creativity to prevent dropouts;
Train students in each school to acquire knowledge about the importance of establishing harmony between physical and emotional aspects of themselves in order to increase their
creativity and well being;
Train students to develop cognitive skills on how to use emotions in order to establish lasting positive relationships with oneself and the others in order to manage spontaneous crisis. Throughout the project, we will use methods such as workshops, debates, role - plays, examples of good practice or learning by doing during which the students are going to learn about the importance of the human body functioning well for the success of the learning process and will become aware that nowadays being healthy is a lifestyle choice, thus it's their decision to be so. Also, they will become aware of the fact that not having good relationships with the others has important negative consequences on their academic performance. In order to develop their competences in establishing good relationships with the others, they will practice and reflect on the principle of reciprocity, learn about empathy, altruism, trust,
forgiveness and develop their ability to resolve conflict. During two teacher training activities, the teachers involved in the project will learn how to implement new strategies to promote a healthy, inspiring environment for learning in schools
and they will acquire new innovative teaching methods to keep students in schools and avoid dropout. Two guides of good practices on avoiding school dropouts for students and teachers are going to be created and they will be freely downloadable on the project website. At the same time, the results achieved will be disseminated in workshops and presentations as widely as possible to the students and teachers in the participant schools, parents, local and wider community. The working language of the project is English and the participants in the activities are teachers and students, aged 14 - 19, from six schools in Romania, Spain, Norway, Estonia, Portugal and Germany.