Teacher Training & Classroom Management
For Teachers: New Strategies For A Positive And Happy School
UNESCO’s Happy Schools framework puts twelve criteria behind a word that usually gets used loosely. This week you score your own school against all twelve, then separate what you can change yourself from what you will have to ask for.
Duration5 days · 25 hrs
LanguageEnglish (B1+)
Group sizeMax 20
CertificateAttendance+ Europass Mobility
FundingErasmus+ eligible
AudienceAll school levels
Why this is Erasmus+ eligible
Structured, multi-day programme (5 days) with a pre-defined schedule and learning outcomes — not a passive lecture format.
Built around interaction: participants engage directly with the trainer and with peers from other countries throughout the course.
Transnational by design — open to participants travelling from outside the host country, a core requirement of Erasmus+ mobility funding.
Overview
A teacher can master every soft skill in the book and still work inside a school where happiness is structurally difficult: a room nobody can rearrange, an assessment calendar that squeezes out everything else, shared values that exist on a poster and nowhere else. That is not an individual skills gap, and treating it as one is why so much wellbeing training changes nothing.
UNESCO’s global Happy Schools framework was built for the other level. It sets out four pillars — People, Process, Place and Principles — and twelve criteria underneath them. They cover relationships and staff wellbeing, curriculum balance and assessment, the physical and digital spaces a school occupies, and the values of trust, inclusion and empowerment that decide whether any of the rest holds. It is worth knowing that the framework grew. The 2016 version had three categories and twenty-two criteria; the 2024 global report added Principles as a fourth pillar and cut the criteria to twelve.
The week runs on those twelve. Each participant scores their own school against every criterion on the first day, which produces something more useful than a list of good ideas: a map of where this particular school is actually weak. Positive-behaviour classroom techniques, codes of conduct built with a class rather than for it, and the pedagogies that make a lesson worth turning up to all sit inside that map, under the pillars they belong to. So do the two that most courses on this subject never reach — the school’s spaces, and its stated principles.
What separates this from a wish list is the last day. Every participant finishes with two things: one change they can make on their own before half-term, and one they cannot. The second is written up as a case, with the person who would have to agree to it named, and the evidence they would bring. Both are honest. A teacher can rearrange a room and change how a lesson opens; a teacher cannot, alone, rewrite what a school says it stands for. Knowing which is which is most of the work.
Methodology
Scored Before Solved
Nothing is designed until the school has been scored against all twelve criteria. Advice that arrives before diagnosis is how wellbeing training ends up being about whichever pillar the trainer likes most.
Two Columns, Always
Every idea in the week is sorted into what you can do yourself and what you would have to ask for. Both columns are legitimate; confusing them is what makes plans die quietly.
Practised, Not Presented
The classroom material — trust-building, codes of conduct, positive-behaviour techniques, movement and outdoor work — is run in the room and taken apart afterwards, rather than described from slides.
What you'll take home
Score a school against UNESCO’s twelve Happy Schools criteria and say, with evidence, which of the four pillars is weakest in your own.
Build a code of conduct with a class rather than for one, and run the trust-building work that makes it hold past the first week.
Choose pedagogies and assessment routines that fit the Process criteria — balanced workload, active learning, flexible ways of showing what has been learned.
Name what your school’s physical and digital spaces are doing to the people in them, and identify the changes that cost nothing.
Separate what you can change alone from what needs agreement, and make the case for one thing in the second column to the person who can actually grant it.
Daily programme
- Icebreaker: each participant writes what “a happy school” means to them in two sentences, before hearing any framework. The notes are kept and read again on Friday
- Where the framework came from and how it changed: three categories and twenty-two criteria in 2016, four pillars and twelve criteria in the 2024 global report, and why Principles was added
- The twelve criteria, one by one, with what each is actually asking about
- What the research asks students and parents: the measurement scales now being built on this framework, what their questions reveal, and the honest limits of them
- Working session: each participant scores their own school across all twelve criteria and marks the three weakest. That score is the specification for the rest of the week
- Warm-up: pairs describe a colleague’s small habit that makes the staffroom better — then consider why nobody has ever said so out loud
- Supportive and collaborative relationships: what makes them possible structurally rather than personally, and the difference between a friendly school and a safe one
- Physical and social-emotional wellbeing — including staff, which this pillar explicitly covers and most wellbeing initiatives quietly omit
- Building a code of conduct with a class rather than for one: run in full, then taken apart — what makes students own it, and what makes it dead by October
- Consistency and trust: the classroom routines that produce it, practised in the room
- Working session: the People criteria from your Day 1 score, with actions sorted into what you can do and what you would have to ask for
- Balanced curricula and manageable workload: what the criterion means when the timetable is not yours to set
- Joyful and engaging pedagogies: making learning relevant, breaking routine with movement-based, hands-on and outdoor work — run as activities, then examined for why they work
- Positive-behaviour classroom techniques in practice, and where they stop being enough
- Holistic and flexible assessments: what “flexible pathways to show learning” looks like in a real subject with a real exam at the end of it
- Working session: the Process criteria from your score, same two columns
- Place, criterion by criterion: safe, healthy and accessible facilities; functional and inclusive spatial design; the school as a social hub for its community
- What a teacher can actually change about a space in a week, what needs a budget, and what only needs permission nobody has asked for
- The digital half of Place, which the framework explicitly includes and schools rarely audit
- Principles: trust, inclusion and empowerment — the pillar that decides whether the other three hold. What each looks like when it is real, and what it looks like when it is a poster
- Where a stated principle and an actual practice contradict each other in your own school, and what that contradiction teaches students regardless of what is taught
- Working session: the Place and Principles criteria from your score — this is where the second column fills up, and that is the point
- Day 1’s two sentences are read back: what has changed about what you meant by a happy school
- List one, finished: the change you will make yourself before half-term, with the week it starts and what you will notice if it is working
- List two, prepared: one thing you cannot do alone — written as a case, naming the person who would have to agree, the criterion it addresses, and the evidence you would bring
- The ask, rehearsed in pairs, with the other person playing the person who has to say yes — then two taken to the whole group
- Course evaluation and reflection on learning
- Certification ceremony
Please note: sessions run from 09:30 to 15:00, Monday to Friday, with a break for lunch. Timings can shift a little to suit the venue and the group. If you'd like a specific topic covered, let us know when you apply — the confirmed day-by-day schedule is sent to registered participants ahead of the course.
Certificate: we issue the Certificate of Attendance to everyone who's present for at least 80% of the course — tracked with the daily sign-in sheet (see Certificate & assessment).
Equipment: a few of our courses ask participants to bring a laptop — check the day-by-day programme above, or ask us if you're not sure.
Need a formal invoice or proforma for your school's records? Ask us — we issue official invoices with the participant's name and course details.
Course page last updated: 4 September 2026
Materials & tools
UNESCO’s global Happy Schools framework — four pillars and twelve criteria, published free of charge, and the checklist every session of the week runs against
Why the world needs happy schools: Global report on happiness in and for learning (UNESCO, 2024) — the report the framework comes from, worked with on Day 1
The measurement scales developed against this framework for students and for parents — examined on Day 1 for what they ask and what their limits are, not administered
Your own scoring of your school across the twelve criteria, completed on Day 1 and used as the specification for everything built afterwards
A change plan and a written case, the two outputs of the week
Certificate & assessment
This is a Certificate of Attendance, not an exam-based qualification — recognition comes from completing the structured programme, not from passing a test. The real, lasting value is in the competencies listed above under What you'll take home.
Type your name above — clearly marked "SAMPLE" in the PDF, not an official document.
The real certificate is signed by your trainer and EMA's authorised signatory. Your own signature isn't on this document — it's captured separately, on the Europass Mobility document.
Need to verify a real certificate? Check it online using the serial number and participant's full name, or contact us directly — [email protected], OID E10304561.
Attendance
Tracked using a sign-in sheet with one signature per participant per day (paper or digital). This record is used to issue your Certificate of Attendance and Europass Mobility document. View sign-in sheet (PDF)
Output
Every participant leaves with a completed Dissemination & School Impact Plan — a step-by-step template for applying the course back at your school (see below).
Feedback
An end-of-course evaluation form is sent to every participant after the course ends — a chance to reflect on what you've learned and how you'll apply it, and it helps us keep improving the course for future participants.
Your paperwork
Keep your travel tickets, boarding passes and (if you used green travel) any related receipts — your school or National Agency may ask for these for their own Erasmus+ reporting.
How to prepare
Come knowing your own school in specifics. Who decides whether a room can be rearranged, whether a routine can change, whether money exists. What the school says it stands for, and where that is written down. Day 1 scores your school against twelve criteria, and vague answers produce a vague score.
Have one class in mind as well. The classroom work in the middle of the week is built for a real group, and the plan written for students in general is the one that never gets used.
Do not bring survey data or anything identifying students or colleagues. Everything scored during the week is your own reading of your own school, which keeps other people out of it.
No prior knowledge of the framework is needed. It is introduced on Day 1 and used as a checklist from then on.
Practical information
Registration & documents
Not sure how registering works or what paperwork is involved? See our full Registration & Documents guide — from applying to your Certificate of Attendance, in one place.
Invitation letter
Need a formal invitation letter for your school or embassy? Request one — we send it within 2 business days. See a sample (PDF).
Learning Agreement
Prepared by our staff and sent to you and your school once your registration form is submitted — see what it looks like. See a sample (PDF).
Billing & invoicing
We issue official invoices/proformas with the participant's name and course details — ask us. Payment is due in full by bank transfer before the course start date. See a sample (PDF).
Airport transfer
Guidance on getting from the nearest airport to the venue is included in your welcome information.
Accommodation
We can recommend partner hotels close to the venue in the host city — ask us when you apply.
For your school / proposal
School impact
After completing this Teacher Training & Classroom Management course, the participating staff member can transfer outcomes directly to their school: a short briefing for colleagues sharing the key takeaways, applying relevant tools or strategies from the programme in their own role, and inclusion of the course materials in the school's professional development resources — turning one person's mobility into a wider institutional gain that supports the school's European Development Plan. Use the Dissemination & School Impact Plan below to fill in your own — it saves as you go and can generate a one-page summary for your coordinator too.
0/5 sections started
Write your answers in English — it keeps every teacher's plan consistent if your coordinator compares several.
Filling these in ties this plan to a specific mobility — useful if your coordinator collects plans from several courses/teachers.
Staff-room dissemination session
Step 1 of 5
Photos of the session or sign-in sheet are embedded straight into both PDFs — they aren't autosaved, so re-attach them if you reload this page. The link above IS autosaved.
If you're presenting, base it on the course materials — a summary slide for colleagues rarely needs more than 15–20 minutes.
Classroom or institutional application
Step 2 of 5
Name the real class, year group or school process you'll apply this to — not the course topic itself.
Institutional resource management
Step 3 of 5
School / European Development Plan link
Step 4 of 5
Give the admin a one-page summary: what the course delivered, the cost, how it feeds into the school plan, and the expected outcome.
Follow-up & impact check-in
Step 5 of 5
Your check-in date is before the planned application date in Step 2 — check-ins usually happen a few months after you've actually applied the course, so there's something real to report.
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After the course
Participants will receive their certificates (Certificate of Attendance + Europass).
Participants will complete a general course evaluation and event survey.
Participants will receive course materials, videos, photos, and PDF documents in both digital and print formats.
Follow-up support: an email group is created for idea exchange, self-evaluation materials are provided, and participants receive a follow-up check-in after 3 months — long enough for the first list to have been done and the second to have been put to someone, and the answer to that ask is the more interesting half.
Frequently asked
This course is an eligible training activity under Erasmus+ Key Action 1 (School Education Mobility) — the course fee, travel and subsistence fall within the eligible cost categories. Whether it is covered depends on your own project's approved grant agreement and your National Agency's rules; we provide all the invoices, attendance records and certificates your National Agency requires for reporting.
B1 is enough — you do not need to be fluent. Trainers speak slowly and plainly, every session is built around doing something rather than sitting and listening, and groups are mixed by nationality so people help each other out. A rough test: if you could follow a staff meeting held in English and ask a question in it, you will be fine here.
Absolutely — group bookings of 3+ from one school receive priority placement, and we can schedule a dedicated session for groups of 12 or more.
Our courses run on request at our centres in Antalya, İstanbul, İzmir, Mersin, Budapest, Bremen and Rome. Tell us your preferred city and dates and we will arrange a session.
Tuition, all course materials, both certificates (attendance + Europass Mobility) and a half-day guided tour of the host city with a local guide. Flights, accommodation and travel insurance are booked separately — we send a vetted hotel list.
You can move to any later session free of charge. Cancellations made 30+ days before the start date receive a full refund; a reduced refund applies closer to the date — see our full Cancellation & Refund Policy for the exact schedule.
Yes, and the week is organised around exactly that question. Every criterion you score gets sorted into what you can change on your own, what needs one colleague, and what needs a decision from above. The first column is larger than most teachers expect — a good deal of Process and People sits inside one classroom. For the rest, you leave with a written case rather than a complaint, which is the difference between a change that happens and one that gets mentioned once in a staff meeting.
They work at different levels on purpose. The soft-skills course is about the individual teacher — resilience, communication, how you show up. This one starts from the position that a school can make happiness structurally difficult no matter how skilled its teachers are, and works on the conditions rather than the person. Teachers who have done one often find the other answers the question it left open.
€80/day€400 total · 5 days
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What's included
25 hours of training & materials
Certificate of attendance
Europass Mobility document
Half-day guided city tour with a local guide
Not included
International flights / travel to the host city
Accommodation
Travel & health insurance
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Registered Erasmus+ provider · OID E10304561
Where our participants come from
Aggregated across all EMA courses, not specific to this session.
Romanian
23%
Polish
14%
Lithuanian
10%
Spanish
7%
Portuguese
7%
+ educators from 19 more countries across Europe and beyond
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