Number four of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015 presents the challenge of “ensuring inclusive, equitable and quality education. And promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” The first of its goals sets the standard to “ensure that all girls and boys receive a full, free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education that delivers relevant and effective learning outcomes”. An inspiration for the teaching team of the only institute in the town of Pinoso in Alicante with 7,966 inhabitants, the Public Institute of Secondary Education José Marhuenda Prats with 520 students.
Nazario Rico Rico, vice director of the institute, expresses concern about certain discouraging conversations that are all too common among students.
—Why do we want to study if there is no future in Pinoso?
—My mother works in the shoe industry and says that she has less work every year because they are moving production abroad.
—Well, my father works in the quarry and now he is in an ERE because there is no demand for marble.
—In my family they are all farmers and they want me to study a trade and become a civil servant so as not to depend on drought and frost and it doesn’t take two years to bring in a harvest. But when I study professionally, there are hardly any jobs for students in Pinoso. So do I have to go abroad?
In Pinoso, the three traditional economic pillars are in crisis. The production of shoes is gradually being relocated, the mining of marble is slowed down by the economic and real estate crisis and agriculture lives in permanent misery due to water shortages and market prices below production costs. Rico explains that “the working conditions in the shoe industry (temporary), mining (occupational risks) and agriculture (horrible living conditions) mean that many families see education as a way to improve their children’s quality of life”.
Expectations Joseba García Plazuelo
These low expectations and the families’ hope for education prompted the teachers to analyze the economic, labor, social and environmental situation of their community; and at the same time to think about the teaching assignment and the quality of the education of their students. Simple continuity and the temptation to seek outside responsibility would not help them improve. They were convinced that they had to investigate, train and try out new curricular, organizational and internal relationship formats as well as to the environment.
In 2018, a group of teachers formed an internal training seminar on “The classroom of the future” (a project of the Ministry of Education and Training in collaboration with the Autonomous Communities) to make learning spaces more flexible in combination with the use of technologies and active methodologies), observe an open gap. Between the sad expectations of his students and the assignments in class. They decide to share this concern with the educational community and local institutions, recognizing that the various actors must work together to reduce the gap between reality and school, so that students do not perceive the institute as a gray and distant space.
Teachers assume that professional updating must be part of their practice. You get in contact with other centers that have experience in the application of active collaboration and inquiry methods, cooperative learning and projects. They ask the students about the rooms, the furniture, and the assignments. They validate their first conclusions with the educational community (families and local agents).
According to David Ferrandis Micó, Professor of Geography and History and one of the promoters of the Institute’s innovation and research project, they manage to make structural changes for the aesthetic and functional transformation of the classroom and the role of the students in their learning process , meaning and importance of Curriculum goals and greater use of technological devices.
Educate for a fairer and more supportive future
“Nothing is more like a network than a library, and in our case it is the space that connects us and allows us to share enriching experiences,” says Estefanía Pérez Fenoll, coordinating teacher of the team of ten teachers trying out to make the library a cultural center, a meeting place for reading, studying and debating. It is available during leisure time and offers different areas for reading pleasure, participating in a dialogical literary meeting or for research work.
The library, a cultural center for meetings, studies, literary discussions and research of the institute, bequeathed by IES JOSÉ MARHUENDA PRATS, PINOSO (ALICANTE).
Respect, equality and coexistence constitute another fundamental axis to improve the Institute’s educational offer.
Inclusion becomes the engine of pedagogical action, the coordinator of equality and coexistence, and the group of fourteen teachers most directly linked to ensuring this right. At the same time, they are considering creating a mediation team to address conflicts between students, teachers and families. Vanessa Ferre Lorente (Equality and Coexistence Coordinator) and Pilar López Azorín, Director of Studies, explain that all activities will be carried out within the framework of the Tutorial Action Plan. They aim to make students think and become aware of how coexistence can be improved.
An activity of particular commitment and creative value was the participation in the audiovisual and gender project “Documóvil”, financed by the Diputación de Alicante. For a few days, the institute became a filming location where two short films on gender perspective were shot: Per als altres soc, in Valencian, about the objectification and sexualization of women; and Being a Man, in Spanish, about the new masculinities. The students created the scripts, acted in them and designed the layout with the help of the project professionals.
To ensure the transition from elementary school to secondary school, the management team, advisor and teachers of the first ESO groups and the last year of elementary school of the affiliated schools maintain a fluid relationship by organizing regular meetings and visits of the Institute for sixth graders and theirs Familys. With the cooperative method of “peer tutoring” they can further deepen this welcome purpose. Each first-year student at ESO has a senior third-year student as a reference, with whom they form a special bond that ensures good integration at the center.
Learn “with meaning”.
The Center’s commitment goes much further; The teaching itself is reconsidered and they form the Educational Innovation and Research Project team, made up of seven teachers willing to reflect, train and investigate to address student concerns.
—The classes look like prisons…
“…or concentration camps.
– I don’t like the pale green of the tables, the chairs, the blackboard… I don’t like it at all.
– Besides, the teacher is always talking and here we have to put up with the paper without being able to say anything.
They address changes in teaching and evolve towards more project-based learning formats, integrate technology, reorganize spaces and put into practice formative assessment in which students take a leading role. This is how, in 2019-20, the “Respira 21” project (take a breath and take a deep breath for the 21 its value has been consolidated and proven), is born, explains Nazario Rico.
The materialization of these projects was carried out in the first year of ESO and in Geography and History, Valencia: Language and Literature and Informatics, becoming the “Sociolinguistic Àmbit”.
Field work is eight hours per week, grouped into streaks of two consecutive hours. Classes take place in two newly designed and remodeled classrooms, both aesthetically, functionally and technologically, allowing for interaction between students and teachers. The characteristic individuality in the arrangement of tables and chairs is transferred to a group arrangement. Each student is assigned a role (speaker, secretary, coordinator and supervisor), according to David Ferrandis, one of the teachers on the team.
Investigation and presentation work in the project classroom and other rooms of the Institute Left by IES JOSÉ MARHUENDA PRATS, PINOSO (ALICANTE)
Co-teaching is another pillar of methodological change. The three Valencian teachers receive a geography and history teacher in the classroom for one hour per week. In addition to an additional lesson in computer science with the teacher of the subject.
The content is organized and brought together in three projects. One per quarter. In Go go travel, students take on the role of travelers and create an itinerary that they illustrate with all sorts of geographical, cultural, economic, etc. references. with a virtual blog. At Japó Geogràfic, they become editors of a Japan-based magazine specializing in the environment and the technologies used to preserve it. Arqueòlegs i arqueòlogues al museu is the third. The students are archaeologists, they collect samples from the replica of five sites, one from prehistoric times, two from river civilizations (Egypt and Mesopotamia) and two from ancient civilizations (Greece and Rome).
The end product is five information panels on each of the civilizations or stages: location, society, religion, politics, economy and art. They are exhibited in the institute and explained by the students; also in the city library. According to David Ferrandis, they reconstruct the process that exists from the moment an archaeological piece is found to its display and dissemination in a museum.
Many other initiatives are launched, such as that of the organizing team of the conferences “We reflect on the present; We are future-oriented”, open to the educational community and with topics related to the SDGs. Entrepreneurs, politicians, municipal technicians, researchers, irrigation community leaders, neighborhood association representatives, teachers, and the college regulator are all involved in the work on the sustainability of our ways of life, the future of jobs, and the responsiveness of education systems.
The teaching team of the IES José Marhuenda Prats is aware that the responsibility and importance of goal four of the SDGs, the demand for quality in the public education service, makes them embark on a complex practice full of challenges that opens new horizons. A work that aims with conviction towards full inclusion, justice and quality improvement for all.
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