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OUR GUIDE
1. Context:
Hello everybody and welcome to Apollo School, the new centre of education in Arroyomolinos, Madrid, ready to answer the problems of educative infrastructures in this town located southeast Madrid.
According to our figures, Arroyomolinos has nearly 30.000 inhabitants, 49% of the population is under 35 years old and it has the highest birth rate of all Community of Madrid with a figure up to 20 births per 1.000 residents.
The growth of the population is so fast that even the major of the town, Carlos Ruipérez, of Ciudadanos, has warned about the schooling problems Arroyomolinos will face in the near future in early childhood education, primary, ESO and even Baccalaurate.
All these facts lead us to make an agreement with the city council to develop a new centre of high quality education called Apollo, as the Greek god of music and poetry and the representation of the golden mean amongst other things.
Our school is a government-dependent private education centre because this model allows us to develop the values from an egalitarian, nonsexist and fraternal perspective and the way of learning we promote to encourage students to build their own knowledge through real experiences, to make them self-confident and XXI Century citizens; to develop great competence in all aspects of the curriculum and to build positive social relations.
2. Some facts about the center:
Our intention since the beginning was to cover all the schooling period, from 0 to 18 years old which mean early education to Baccalaurate because the needs are in all this period and as a government-dependent private centre we need a certain number of student to be economically feasible. Also having all the educational stages help us to develop values as responsibility, trust and help the others in our students in some activities we do such us the assistance the bigger provide to the smaller or the welcome program.
For that we have different kinds of what we can call contracts according to the different educational periods. For example, our pre-school education is almost free thanks to an agreement we signed with the city council that support nearly all the expenses of the small kids that comes here.
As 17 % of centers in Madrid region, our Primary and Secondary education is concerted which means that the Consejería de Educación contributes with about 3.000 Euros per student enrolled in these periods. It seems a huge amount of money but you must consider that public schools get an average of 6.200 Euros which is more than twice the money we receive.
This situation forces us to charge a fee for every student to let us offer the education we want but this fee is small compared with all we offer.
If we talk about Primary Education, for example, we offer a wide schedule with many possibilities. We open the school at 7:30 to let families with both parents working let their children in the school and we give them breakfast here and provide them some activities to use the time they stay here.
The formal Primary education schedule goes from 9 to 16.
From 9 to 12:30 we have lessons and each class does the work they have to do. From 12:30 to 14:30 is lunch time. In Primary, have lunch in the school is compulsory because we consider that part of the learning of the children to know how to nourish healthy and to behave in this kind of social situations and – most important – to learn how to eat without a television near and talk with partners, something that we, as society, are missing.
Before and after lunch time the students have free time to do whatever they want.
In the afternoon period we have 1,5 hour more of lessons. Some people told us to do all the classes straight on but this schedule fits better with families where both parents work which is the case of the majority in Arroyomolinos.
We are very proud of our bilingualism, we have worked hard on it and I think we are one of the best bilingual schools of all Madrid. We offer almost 50 per cent of the classes in English. For example, between 3 or 4 hours of science, depending the course, Art and Craft with 1,5 hour per week, Religion or Philosophy for kids, depending what want the families, is in English too and, of course, English language, 4 hours per week with a wide range of activities.
In addition to proper lessons, the language used during free time by teachers and students can be either Spanish or English, there’s no restriction. It’s amazing when you walk across the school and realize that children can play football in English, which means that our program works
3. Leadership:
Although we are a government-private centre, we consider ourselves a democratic school because we charge very low fees and we offer scholarships for those families with economic issues. This money comes from some agreement of cooperation we signed at the beginning with the big companies that works in our area share our idea of school and are conscious of the importance of being part of the community and not just employers.
So, as a democratic school our leadership can’t be other but what Kurt Lewin called democratic, based on the collaboration and participation of all members in which dialogue is the way to develop our educational and social projects.
For example, me, as manager because I am not connected with daily learning process and kids that’s why I can have a wider perspective of the center life, see aspects to improve, listen proposal from teachers and parents, and so on. With all this information that we collet though our regular assemblies, or extraordinary if needed, we discuss the current development of our school and reconsider changes if things are not working. But, as I have said, that doesn’t mean that me or other impose his will, is a shared decision based in multiple opinions and taking into account our current possibilities.
It worth to say that in Apollo all the teachers, other employees, assistants, the cook, the families, all are very concern about we want to our kids – which is the best possible education that prepare them to be good and happy people in the future, competent with all their capacities.
The fact that all we shared this aim is the key to our improvement and overcome the difficulties that unavoidably arise sometimes and are solved by dialogue.
4. Relation with families:
In Apollo we believe that educating in an efficacy way is only possible if there is complicity with families. There must be coherence between education at school and at home. That’s why parents shouldn’t educate their kids without taking into account the school education and that is the main reason why family and school need to work together.
Because of different facts such us the extension of time tables and the incorporation of women to work, schooling starts earlier day by day. No one teach parents how to educate their kids and how to face different possible situations. Families have now some special needs that school centers can´t ignore.
This is why in Apolo we think necessary the real participation of families. But in the other hand we do believe that collaboration between both of them is not always effective. To achieve an effective collaboration between the school center and families there must be communication, shared information and different points of view but establishing some limits.
Our School center belongs to a project called Learning Communities which is based in the interactions of different groups that belong to the same learning Community such as teachers, students, families. The most important part to highlight about this project is the interactive activities that they are done in it such as assemblies, workgroups, tutorials… and the way that families are involved with the center in and extra curriculum way.
We believe that there should be only professors in classrooms because we need to be critic with the people leadering the class as it is possible that parents don’t have the necessary formation to control one.
Apart from teaching our students concepts and to develop their multiple intelligences and skills, above all, we want them to be happy.
We want childs to grow in a easy, comfort, peaceful and happyway. Because of that we have different school programs to face different possible situations such as welcome programs, projects against bullying… because we want our center to be an inclusive school, which means same opportunities for all kind of students. We learn about diversity and about many values to be good citizens and of course to be good people.
To achieve this goal it is fundamental for us to have a close relationship between teachers and students. We need to be worried about them in not only an academic way, but in a personal one. If a kid needs any kind of help, he can asks whoever he wants in the center and he would immediately receive physiological help.
This makes us feel as if we were a big family.
5. Welcome program:
The “Welcome program” was established to help new students from different countries to adapt comfortably and satisfactorily to the new environment. Once a new student come to the school a English-spoken classmate is assigned to help him or her with everything from introduce new people in the school, accompany to classes and spaces or explain our food habits, for example.
We have a true experience of the importance of this sort of programs with Hanna and her will be interviewed by Blanca.
6. Learning model:
Our school a participate and a constructivism learning model. That means that our students´ learning will be a critic activity and teachers will be the person responsable for carrying out that students are able to move forward in their own learning.
For constructivism, learn means to take at risk to make mistakes. Those mistakes are not consider at mistakes at all, they are consider as creative moments. The education in this type of learning is a change in the organization and the support of the methods, which allow students building their own knowledge. We have an active methodology that is one which generate interest in students and also teachers are people who promote that interest carrying out stimulant learning situation.
With that constructivism perspective we want to approach the objetive that students guide their learning process in a cooperative way. Our students do tasks and activities in groups avoiding unpleasant situations and adapting theirselves one another. With this we try to favour the students´ development of different and multiple intelligences. Each student has different intelligences develop than other so the education is adapted to that.
Apollo school has a flexible curriculum because it is necessary that all of us would be together to achieve adapt school to students needs. Our objetive is to know all that needs to foster their possibilities in one way or another.
7. Values of our school:
Our school believes in equality for being able to help all students equally and they can start building their own knowledge evaluating diversity. We respect students, we listen them, we understand them and we try to build an education in a motivate atmosphere.
This type of education implies that all the members of the community learn together with no matter about their origin, personal and social conditions, or even disabilities or learning problems.
In this term our principal aim is to take effective the personal rights, equality opportunities and participation.
8. Developed skills and how are developed
In our school the main objective is to achieve student's development by themselves. For that in the school we try to offer them all the resources they need.
We go after student's dependence. It's so important to teach students social values such as respect.
We want the collaboration between students, teachers and families.
We work with the four bases of Delors' report:
• Learn to know
• Learn to make
• Learn to live together
• Learn to be
We want to develop some skills and we work with the four Cs:
• Critical thinking
• Collaboration
• Communication
• Creativity
9. Model of coexistence and conflict resolution
We are establishing a Finnish project called KiVa to deal with harassment cases.
The objective of KiVa is to prevent, detect and stop school bullying.
We work at three levels:
• School. Teachers are informed about bullying and how to deal with it.
• Class. It's taught not to accept abusive practices.
• Students. The situation is monitored to verify that it has changed.
Trust is one of the main objectives. Students should feel comfortable to speak with their teachers about whatever they need. Focus on the needs of every student is something that is also working at school.
We don´t believe that a punishment is necessary to deal with conflicts, our school bet on dialogue.
10. Methodology
Our methodology is based in constructivism, social constructivism and for the first courses, behaviourism. Focusing on Elementary school, we love using this kind of methodology since it allows students to be more independent, they are encouraged to be responsible and autonomous in their own learning, they are actively involved as they form part of this big idea or project with the whole classroom, it allows a democratic environment that leads to discussions and questioning, it lets students be more dynamic, creative and interactive with what they are learning and to work together through collaborative and cooperative learning which develops a set of very different skills from social to moral values.
We believe that the role of the teacher must be centred in cognitive modelling, as the teacher has to lead the students to reflect while they are engaged in the activities, coaching, as the teacher should motivate students, analyse their performances and provide feedback, and scaffolding, providing temporary frameworks that help the students to go beyond their capacities. (Wood and Middleton, 1975).
A typical constructivist classroom here at the Apollo School will begin with the whole of the subject and then divide it into parts, the next thing would be pursuing students’ questions or interests in order to provide sources and materials, later learning is interaction and we try to build from what the students already know, then they work in groups and the teacher does a follow-up and assessment of their improvements and development through oral discussions, the KWL chart (what we know, what we want to know, what we have learned, how we know it), mind mapping or pre-testing.
So basically a question or issue raises, then we study the case, we transform it into a long-term project and students work on it through different ways such as cooperative learning, (including jigsaw or peer teaching), guided instruction (Fisher & Frey, 2010) which is based in scaffolding, or problem-based learning, that achieves the goal of meaningful learning, which is non-arbitrary. We also like to work with experimentation, research projects, field trips, films and class discussions, because it brings us to a more realistic reflection of what is life and it also prepares them for a real future.
So we can say that our learning model is based in the Kolb cycle of learning (McLeod, 2010) which is a process where four stages take place. It starts by a concrete experience or immersion. This experience or issue is observed and analysed in a second stage called reflection that allow students to formulate abstract concepts in the third stage called conceptualization and conclusions. These conclusions are later verified or actively experimented in new situations, this would be the fourth stage called application, in order to create new concrete experiences starting the whole cycle again.
11. ICTs
Of course we wouldn’t be preparing our students for the future if we didn’t consider how important ICTs and technology are. The ICT programme in our school includes the provision of essential ICT infrastructure such as teaching and shared student computers, projectors, networking equipment, learning platforms and local software or apps to support learning and to support those children with learning disabilities like, for example, dyslexia; the provision of access to broadband connectivity to schools, continuous professional development for teachers in ICT and integrating ICT within the curriculum and providing curriculum-relevant digital content and software.
It is not only important because technology plays a big role in our daily lives and in the future, but because ICTs helps us to actively engage with students, to support inclusion and diversity enhancing the learning opportunities for all students.(UNESCO, 2008)
12. Bilingual Program
Our bilingual program has been designed in order to motivate our students on acquiring a second language, in our case the English language.
We believe that this program is essential regarding our student’s process of learning since it trains them to be prepared to live in a society, where values such as tolerance and the involvement in other cultures (multiculturalism) are encouraged.
The whole centre develops the bilingual program but we will focus in Primary Education. The program sets a schedule where students have 4 hours of English language and Literacy, 3 hours of Science, 1h of arts and crafts, and starting in 5th and 6th grade 1 hour and a half of History of Religions.
At the same time, the whole school is divided into four Corners of English-Speaking countries. This program is called the Corner-Program. The students of each class are divided into four sections and are randomly classified into one of these Corners.
The English-Speaking country assigned to each Corner changes every four years so that every single student knows in depth each of the Corners. It is a project where all the cycles are involved, that means that all the students from all the stages participate together; this creates bonds between students of different ages and a sense of union, that’s why we call our centre a big family.
Inside the Corner-Program we have set a system of Corner-Points, where students can acquire points and being awarded by chasing those attitudes that we want to foster in order to improve the daily life here in our school, paying special attention to be able to communicate in English.