UNDERSTAND YOUR EMOTIONS, RULE YOUR MIND, UPGRADE YOUR LIFE Context/Background: The inspiring point of our project is the studies about Emotional Intelligence which has started to play a wider part in the curriculum in recent years, and our grasping the idea that Emotional Intelligence (having a strong relation with the student’s experiences, educational environment and the people taken as a role model) is teachable and improvable. In our modern world, there is a huge stress on the academic achievements of our children and unfortunately their emotional education is left up to chance, which negatively affects their success in their future lives. One possible solution to this dilemma is to have a vision of “training students’ minds and hearts as a whole”. In the near future, we foresee that we will have curriculums which treat the subjects on the main human abilities such as self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, problem solving and cooperation. Hence, we have prepared a project covering the steps of first taking two courses abroad (named as “Emotional Intelligence” and “Understanding Yourself, Understanding Your Learners: Enneagram”) and then practicing and disseminating the acquired knowledge and experience in our school in a planned frame. Objectives: - To enhance our knowledge and experiences about the practice of Emotional Intelligence which we feel incomplete about, and in this way to improve our ability to solve the problems like ADHD, disliking school, peer bullying and lack of motivation. - To improve our students’ aptitude for the five skill areas of the Emotional Intelligence (which are Self- awareness, Self-management, Relationship Management, Social Awareness and Empathy) - To help students get maximum benefits from school by equipping them with the ability to have an intrinsic motivation, use the feelings wisely, have an optimistic point of view, take responsibility, communicate positively with peers and teachers - To develop a teaching staff who can understand themselves and their learners better and thus to tie the students more to school by creating more efficient, more peaceful and less stressful teaching environment - To be a more successful and more favored school model, integrating the good examples of Emotional Intelligence Development from EU countries Profile of participants: Our project team is made up of 6 primary school teachers and they have been chosen, at the Board Meeting, at the beginning of the education year, by a democratic and fair election, using the selection criteria of being hard-working, ready to group work, eager to share experience, motivated for personal development, having specific goals for the mobility and committed to contribute to our school in the long term. Methodology: -Presentations, discussions, individual and pair exercises, group work and reflection, brain storming, peer support, case studies; - Games, creative drama techniques, questionnaires, analysis, problem solving workshops; - Making a documentation using audio-visual tools, creating a bulletin board and a blog focused on the studies and the results Results and impact : At the end of the project , we envisage a school environment - where teachers can have high teaching motivation and satisfaction and they take the responsibility of arranging the educational environment more consciously with an eye to Emotional Intelligence development of the students - where students are emotionally intelligent and they have the ability to regulate their feelings and behaviors more wisely, effectively and positively, and thereby their academic achievements and desired behaviors are boosted. As the potential longer term benefits, we expect a positive effect on the quality of education in the frame of EU standards and we hope to create an equal opportunity of education in global sense.