Teachers committed to improving the quality of teaching

Number four of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, approved by the United Nations in 2015, establishes the challenge of “Guaranteeing inclusive, equitable and quality education. And promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” The first of its goals sets the benchmark of “ensuring that all girls and boys have complete, free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education that produces relevant and effective learning outcomes”. An inspiration for the teaching team of the only institute in the Alicante town of Pinoso, with 7,966 inhabitants, the Public Institute of Secondary Education José Marhuenda Pratswith 520 students.

Rich Nazariodeputy director of the institute, conveys his concern about certain discouraging conversations, all too common, among the students.

—Why do we want to study, if there is no future in Pinoso?

—My mother works in shoes and says that every year she has less work, because they are taking manufacturing 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 career and become a civil servant so as not to depend on droughts, frosts and not take two years to collect a harvest. But if I study a career, in Pinoso there are hardly any jobs for university students. So, will I have to go live abroad?

In Pinoso the three traditional economic pillars are in crisis. The manufacture of footwear is gradually relocated, the extraction of marble is slowed down by the economic and real estate crisis and agriculture lives in permanent hardship due to the water deficit and market prices below production costs. Rico explains that “the working conditions in the footwear sector (temporary), in mining (occupational risks) and in agriculture (terrible living conditions) make many families see education as a way to improve the quality of life of their children”.

These low expectations and the hope of families in education prompted teachers to analyze the economic, labor, social and environmental situation of their municipality; and to think, at the same time, about the teaching task and the quality of the training they provided their students. The simple continuity and the temptation to look for responsibilities outside was not going to serve them to improve. They were convinced that they should investigate, train and test new curricular, organizational and internal relationship formats and with the environment.

In 2018, a group of teachers constituted an internal training seminar on “the classroom of the future” (project of the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training in collaboration with the autonomous communities, of making learning spaces more flexible in combination with the use of technologies and active methodologies), they observe an open gap. Between the sad expectations of his students and the tasks addressed in the classroom. They decide to convey this concern to the educational community and municipal entities and realize that the different agents must collaborate to reduce the reality-school gap, in order to prevent students from perceiving the institute as a gray and distant space.

Teachers assume that professional updating must be part of their practice. They contact other centers with experience in the use of active collaboration and inquiry methodologies, cooperative learning and projects. They ask the students about the spaces, the furniture and the class tasks. They validate their first conclusions with the educational community (families and local agents).

According to comments David Ferrandis Micoprofessor of Geography and History and one of the promoters of the Innovation and Research Project of the institute, they manage to implement structural modifications of aesthetic and functional transformation of the classroom space, prominence of the students in their learning process, significance and sense of the curricular objectives and greater use of technological devices.

Educate for a fairer and more supportive future

“There is nothing that is more like a network than a library and, in our case, it is the space that unites us and allows us to share enriching experiences,” he says. Stephanie Perez Fenollcoordinating professor of team of ten teachers who try to make the library a cultural center, meeting place, reading, study and debate. Available during recreation hours, it has different areas to enjoy reading, participate in a dialogic literary gathering or do a research paper.

Respect, equality and coexistence constitute another of the basic axes for improving the educational offer of the institute.

Inclusion becomes a driver of teaching action, of coordination of equality and coexistence and of the group of fourteen teachers more directly linked to the guarantee of this right. At the same time, they contemplate the creation of a mediation team to address conflicts between students, teachers and families. Vanessa Ferre Lorente (coordinator for equality and coexistence) and Pilar Lopez Azorinhead of studies, explain to us that all the activities are conveyed through the Tutorial Action Plan. They are aimed at making students reflect and become aware of improving coexistence.

An activity of special commitment and formative value was the participation in the audiovisual and gender project “documobile”, financed by the Diputación de Alicante. For a few days, the institute became a filming set, where two shorts on gender perspective were recorded: For other friends, in Valencian, on the objectification and sexualization of women; and Being a man, in Spanish, around the new masculinities. The students prepared the scripts, starred in them and laid out the layout with the help of the project’s professionals.

To ensure the transition from primary to secondary education, the management teamthe counselor and the teachers of the first ESO groups and the last year of Primary school of the affiliated schools, maintain a fluid relationship, organizing periodic meetings and visits to the institute for sixth grade students and their families. They get to further delve into this welcome purpose using the cooperative method of “peer tutoring”. Each student in the first year of ESO has as a reference an older student, in the third year, with whom they establish a special bond that ensures a good integration in the center.

Learn ‘with meaning’

The center’s commitment goes much further; the teaching itself is reconsidered and they create the team “Educational Innovation and Research Project”, formed by seven teacherswilling to reflect, train and investigate to respond to the concerns of students.

—The classes look like prisons…

“…or concentration camps.

—The pale green color of the tables, the chairs, the blackboard… I don’t like it at all.

—Besides, the teacher always talks and here we are to put up with the lock unable to say anything.

address changes in teaching methods and evolve to more project-focused learning formats, integrating technologies, reorganizing spaces, putting into practice a formative assessment in which students students take a leading role. In this way, in 2019-20, the project “breathe 21″ (letting in fresh air and taking breath for the 21st century), continuing from 2020-21 under the name of “inspire 21″ (enjoying the change, savoring the work once its value has been consolidated and proven), explains Nazario Rico.

The materialization of these projects has been carried out in the first year of ESO and in Geography and History, Valencia: Language and Literature, and Computer Science, becoming the “sociolinguistic Àmbit”.

The field work occupies eight hours a week grouped into strips of two consecutive hours. Classes take place in two redesigned and transformed classrooms, both aesthetically and functionally and technologically, making interaction between students and teachers possible. The characteristic individuality in the arrangement of tables and chairs is transformed into a group arrangement. Each student is assigned a role (spokesperson, secretary, coordinator and supervisor), according to David Ferrandis, one of the teachers on the team.

Co-teaching is another of the pillars of methodological change. The three Valencian teachers receive a Geography and History teacher in the classroom for one hour a week. In addition to sharing another hour of Computer Science with the teacher of the subject.

The contents are organized and merged into three projects. One per quarter. In go go travel students assume the role of travelers and draw up an itinerary, illustrating it with all kinds of references, geographical, cultural, economic, etc. using a virtual blog. At Japó Geogràfic, they become editors of a magazine based in Japan, specialized in the environment and technology applied to its conservation. Arqueòlegs i arqueòlogues al museu is the third. The students are archaeologists, they collect samples from the recreation of five sites, one from Prehistory, two from river civilizations (Egypt and Mesopotamia) and two from ancient civilizations (Greece and Rome).

The final product is five informative panels on each of the civilizations or stages: location, society, religion, politics, economy and art. They are exposed in the institute and are explained by the students; also in the municipal library of the town. According to David Ferrandis, they recreate the process that exists from the moment an archaeological piece is found to its exhibition and dissemination in a museum.

Many other initiatives are launched, such as that of the conference organization team “We reflect on the present; we are oriented for the future”, open to the educational community and with themes around the SDGs. Entrepreneurs, politicians, municipal technicians, researchers, presidents of irrigation communities, representatives of neighborhood associations, teachers and the high education inspectorate participate to work on the sustainability of our way of life, the future of work activities and response capacities. of educational systems.

The teaching team of IES Jose Marhuenda Prats is aware that the responsibility and meaning of objective four of the SDGs, on the demand for quality in the educational public service, makes them bet on a complex practice full of challenges that opens up new horizons. A work aimed with conviction at full inclusion, equity and quality improvement for all.

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