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Hello! We are Susana and Marisa. We are both from Portugal and work at a school in the city of Viana do Castelo as educational and clinical psychologists. We decided to join this experience because we believe it would be an asset to our professional development and personal growth, as we believe in the importance of these learning moments. Therefore, we will develop our training diary here throughout this experience in the city of SPLIT!

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Instagram post feliz páscoa delicado amarelo e marrom

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We began this training experience on the 7th of July with high expectations of a week that promised to be personally and professionally enriching. Let's do it!

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Colagem de fotos de novidades de café a escuro e creme

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On the first day of our journey, as we only had the welcome event at the end of the day, we did a tour to get familiarized with the beautiful city of Split! We proceeded to explore the Diocletian’s Palace! This palace was built in 305 AD for the Roman Emperor Diocletian as his retirement complex. However, over the centuries, the city of Split has grown around Diocletian’s Palace leaving many of the Palace’s buildings to remain intact. Diocletian’s Palace is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site with a lot of interesting spots, like the cellars where Daenerys kept her dragons when she was in the city of Meereen (of course if you are a huge fan of Game of Thrones, like ourselves!)

After getting to know this amazing place, we went to Trogir, one of the most ancient cities of Croacia. It's small and very charming. The first claims of Trogir's existence date back to 2,000 BC. From then on, the small walled city had a winding trajectory and passed through many different hands. The city prospered and reached the middle age being protected by the Byzantine. However, in the 12th century it was attacked by the Arabs, destroyed and abandoned. A few years later, Trogir was reborn under the command of the kings of Hungary. Afterwards, his domain passed into the hands of the Venetians. Until finally, in 1997, with so much history to tell, it was declared by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. As our little historical time travel reached its end we started getting ready for our meeting at Erasmus Center. This day had already been wonderful because of the opportunity to visit such curious and important places but the best came at the end of the day as we were welcomed by the organization of the course in an event that culminated in a social interaction over food and drinks of the many countries that participated in the courses. In the opening session, an introduction of the course was made as well as the participants from the different countries through a mini "eurovision" contest. The participants had to share their names, jobs and cities they came from. In addition, the organization provided a portfolio for the classes with some useful information of the city of Split. We finished our first day with a fabulous dinner, a nice stroll on the Riva Promenade, the harbor of Split. Big and imposing palm trees, colorful buildings, and views out to the Adriatic Sea! We were already in love with Split!

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Colorful Photographic Diverse Women Fashion Photo Collage (1)

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Our journey continued on to the second day, where we attended our first day of lessons with an amazing teacher that surely captured everyone's attention. We talked about the challenges in the inclusive classroom, about communication and communication styles, basic emotions management, narrative therapy and Gardner´s theory of multiple intelligences throughout the morning. The activities that we did were very interesting as we got the chance to do them in first hand before applying them with our students. We did many activities (written and drawn), for example, digital activities and a debate of an international investigation and its results. In this debate we compared our countries and were a bit shocked to find out that Portuguese teachers have the highest level of burnout symptoms and poor mental health. Despite this result, we concluded that our school system is one of the most well functioning and organized in Europe. This made us realize that, even with a lot of challenges and difficulties that our teachers, staff and specialized personnel face on a daily basis, they still love their jobs and work with great commitment, even if it costs them their well being. As we reached the end of the day, we had an experiential learning activity, as we walked through the historical center of Split, also known as the old town. We could once again embrace the heritage and Dalmatian culture with our colleagues.

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Dark Green Elegant Minimalist Our Holiday Photo Collage

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On this day we started our morning tasks with a class about Stress! As a huge challenge for all of us in our time, stress can be very hard to deal with and it can affect our personal and professional life's immensely because we have a tendency to "live" in our minds all the time, entering a spiral of overthinking and negative thoughts. Why so many intrusive ones, you may ask! That's because we are mostly focusing on the negative and worrying about things we cannot control! Like our teacher said: "Our Stress is associated with our control perception". So what can we do? Make stress your friend, make stress your "Esmeralda" :)

To do better we have to learn to love ourselves. As we continued with the lesson, we did some practical exercises and a verbal questionnaire. In this last activity we managed understand how each and everyone of us deal with stress. We also did a group dynamic with some little cards about the things we value the most in life, we watched a video about how to have better conversations and also did a exercise about perception of control and and an activity about gratitude.

Up to this point, the words of the famous Buddhist: "The secret to living well and longer is: eat half, walk double, laugh triple and love without measure" never made more sense! The secret? Work on your oxytocin, because that is where our human affective essence resides.

So, to sum up our learning, we leave a question for you that made us question our perspectives of life: What do you have at this moment that won´t be there in 20 years?

After that we had a last lesson with a very sweet teacher that talked about behavior and how to understand it. It was very interesting as we discussed the choice´s theory on basic needs, total behavior and quality world. From all this, we learnt 5 relevant topics:

1. All behaviors are chosen ones (Every action is a selected behavior even if it is poorly rationalized);

2. Human behavior is total behavior (Total behavior is all that is observed and perceived in all of us);

3. The drivers of all our actions and others are our needs (such us love and belonging, power, fun, survival and freedom);

4. All behavior are purposeful (they assume an intention);

5. Every behavior is the best choice a person has at some point (In every situation even in stressful ones the behavior is selected by each person as a reaction or response to the present situation);

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Grey Beige Blue Minimalist Aesthetic Travel Moodboard Photo Collage

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What makes a good teacher great?

This is how our class started on this day, as we only had one class in the beginning of the day. Here are some thoughts of what can make a teacher great:

Passion for teaching and subject matter;

Expert knowledge;

Effective communication skills;

Empathy and emotional intelligence;

Adaptability and Flexibility;

Inspirational and Motivational Traits;

Innovative Teaching Methods;

Collaboration and Teamwork;

Assessment and Reflection;

Believe in Students;

The rest of our day was destined to a full day trip to the precious jewels of Croatia, the islands! What a day :)

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Blue Elegant Holiday Beach Photo Collage

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After a day full of adventurous blue waters and dreamy landscapes, we had the opportunity to engage in a class of Yoga al Fresco, a yoga session by the river.

We were taken to a house of rural tourism Antonicin Mlin and practiced several different exercises of Hatha Yoga. During this session, we also learnt the following:

How to create a calm environment;

Centering and Breath Awareness;

How to warm-up gently;

Yoga Poses;

Breathing Exercises;

Relaxation and Meditation;

Hatha yoga is a gentle form of yoga that focuses on physical postures, breath control and meditation. It is proved that Hatha Yoga is an excellent practice for reducing stress levels. We really enjoyed it as you can see in the pictures!

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Montagem de Fotos Vertical Mensagens Simples Verde (1)

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Is your Mind Full or Mindful?

This was the premise of the 12th day, where we practiced some mindful techniques outdoors. Our teacher offered to switch our afternoon lessons to the morning (because it had more to do with our jobs as psychologists), so we ended up going to an outdoor activity near the beach where we talked about mindfulness and focus dynamics. We made a few practical activities which could be reapplied to children. On the first one, Susana participated in a group activity that consisted in training attention and focus. Following that, Marisa participated in a group activity that aimed to express emotions through physical and facial expressions.

After that, the whole class was challenged to do two exercises individually. For the first task, we had to walk around the beach and find details on the natural landscape through our 5 senses and write them on our phones or notepads. For the second task, we had to do the rainbow walk where we had to find elements in the same natural canvas that matched the colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple).

At the end, we finished the session with two meditational exercises that the teacher brought. We finished our morning feeling connected to nature, relaxed, hopeful and grateful!

To complete this day, at night we attended a farewell event in a bar with all our Erasmus colleagues. It was a blast! It was a great moment for dancing, talking, catching nice photos and (keep it a secret) having a drink or two :)

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On the last day, we attended a morning class about the Croatian Education System, the practice with special needs children in schools and rapport with parents with special education needs children. After that, we proceeded to the evaluation of the course and finished our programme by receiving our certificates.

It was a moment that we all felt very happy and joyfull about. Once again, we experienced the spirit of Erasmus!

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Blue and Yellow Summer Beach Photo Collage

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Dia 14 - Encerramento da Semana Formativa 

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Dia 14 - Encerramento da Semana Formativa 

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Pomalo. A Croatian word that represents more of a feeling than it does of a concept. It is the philosophy of Dalmatian life, where people take their time and enjoy the simple things, without rush or stress. This is the main essence of Mindfulness. From the first day, Croatia had us falling in love, when we looked through the window of the airplane and we saw a little part of the immense blue of the Adriatic sea curved with different islands. This country is blessed with so much nature, beautiful sites and views. In spite of being small, there is so much natural beauty, so many attractive beaches, culture and walls full of history. That is the image of Split.

During this experience, we loved every bit and part of it. We loved to get to know all the different people and cultures and all the new places we visited. We enjoyed the experience of tasting food from other cuisines of the world. It was so enriching and fulfilling to learn new ways of living, working and feeling, and to realize that we are not so different after all.

It was great to learn with this immersive initiative on how to better ourselves, to understand the challenges of ones professions, as well as learning better tools to communicate in assertive ways to create healthy conversations. We understood the importance of working on perceptions of control, as well as active listening that many times can readjust the reality of schools, mainly students. We absolutely loved to feel the importance of being, as an art of noticing the surroundings and embracing the present as it is.

So in the end, we learnt that "Pomalo" as in many other cultures, offers a way of living a pleasant life with appreciation and gratitude like it should be to everyone and everywhere. Pomalo!

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Azul Colagem Simples Praia Post Facebook (3)

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Red Green White Travel Tour Instagram Post (4)