The training took place in the very center of Barcelona, in the very center of the city, near Plaza Cataluna. Europass Teacher Acedemy was in a historical building under renovation which only partly hid its beauty. The classrooms were well equipped and air conditioned, the staff very helpful. We were quite a large group from Eastern-central Europe 9 people from Rumania, three from Poland and two from Hungary including myself. We had classes in the morning first, and later in the week in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to discover the city, the sights, the markets, the sea front and the beach. The school provided ample tourist information and part of the cultural program was a fabulous trip to the Gracia district lead by a local woman. Besides this we got a voucher that enabled us to enter one of the famous sights of the city, we, the two Hungarians chose La Pedrera, Case Mila by Gaudi.

Our trainer spoke a correct English with a bit of Spanish accent but some of the participants had difficulty expressing themselves and understanding spoken English. Their collegues helped but it slowed down communication. On the first day we began indtroducing ourselves and our school mentioning our motivation to do this course.Some people started their account in the 18th century, some spoke mostly about their country, some about their school, their project and their students.

We started each class with activities: building structures, remembering name, untangling, drawing, and these helped to get to know each other a bit, served as warm up and were usful tools to take home and do them with our students.

The couse material was really challenging, we learned about conflict resolution styles and could identify which style is typical of us: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accomodating. We saw who can benefit from them, one or both parties in a conflict. We heard about SEL, social, emotional learning and learned step leading to creative thinking. Anther important part was work with emotions, recognizing them, understanding causes and consequences, labeling them correctly, expressing them appropriately and finally regulate them effectively.

We learned to set up peer mediation groups and how to train students to take part in them, and also about the importance to engage children with disabilities in decisions affecting their lives.

We worked quite a bit trying to find a definition of bullying which boiled down to one important sentence: bullying: unwanted and agressive behaviour that is repeated over time and involves an impalance in power. We got a handout of: Student Bullying Report, which can be really useful identifying Bullying occurances and can also be handed out to students when a situation requires it.

All in all I found the course very useful and  am sure bydisseminating it and all the on-line couse materials it will help my collegues in their daily work.