School by projects

Have you ever heard before about the methodology named as "school by projects" or "Educación por proyectos"?😮

It's a methodology that took place many years ago, but it has not been until 2016 when it has resurfaced and become fashionable, after all the educational reforms. But, what does it consist of?

The main difference according to the traditional methodology is that all the curricular contents of each subject are related to each other. For instance, at the beginning of the course or each semester, involving all the classes, teachers will teach in accordance with one topic, which is chosen by the teachers and the management team.

In relation, we find some schools in Spain (Málaga or the one to which belongs the professor of Barcelona who gave us a lecture) that works with this methodology, and it seems that their results are not bad for what is expected of a school that follows another methodology than the one we are accustomed to.

By this reason, we should organize the subjects in a way in which all of them are connected to each other, but we first need to work in a cooperative perspective, so that every teacher collaborates to get the best results by this new technic.

As the teacher from Barcelona said, we have to travel on the map of knowledge, by asking the students questions that make them reflect on them, knowing the main interests of each student through their exhibitions or starting conversations or debates related to some recent news. And always, trying to associate these activities with the units.

Accepting diversity

On one of the lessons, we were shown a video of bullying. There were some things that weren’t right, though.  On this video, all of the people were gay (or if straight, afraid to show it). Another thing was that at the school, boys were learning theater, girls playing football. 

The video started with the girl explaining that she realized she was different already when she was really young. The difference was that she liked boys instead of girls. One day, when playing with her friends and suggesting they would play home, with her and her friend (which was a boy) playing the parents, all of her playmates called her strange and left her playing alone. After this, she was being bullied at school, people yelling at her that she liked boys etc. When she was caught kissing a boy she liked, the girls from her school started chasing her, calling her names, gathering people to help them chase her and when she was finally caught, all the students started to physically assault her. After all this she returned home, where were her parents, asking what happened and who did this to her. Unable to answer, she was sent upstairs to clean her face. She received no support from her parents; they only suggested her moving schools.

In the next scene, she was trying to get rid of the writing on her forehead, which said “hetero”. She tried and tried to erase it, but it only got smudgy. The girl was crying. She prepared a bath, took a razor in her hand and started cutting her wrist. Little by little, the blood was dropping in the bathwater.

We don’t know if she died. The video ends with the girl’s parents trying to get into the bathroom shouting her name, with another scene flashing, where the amount of blood is growing and growing in the bathtub. After this, there was a question, which was also the title of the short movie: “Is love all we need?”

This short movie made us think about all the differences we are facing in the modern world. The fact is that we are all different, no matter the race, sexuality, looks etc. No matter how we look on it: although we are all the same, we are all different. All unique. And that is something we should appreciate. This is also something we should transmit and teach to our students. Our values reflect in our teaching, and this is what the students will learn as well. We should acknowledge which values we have.

Love might not be ALL we need, but it’s something essential. We need someone to tell us you are accepted just the way you are, and you have the right to be different from the others. If even one person is ready to fight against the common flow, it might make a difference. It might get people thinking. This leads us to the final question: What kind of values are you teaching the children - the future - and what kind of consequences might there be?

Seventh Category: Free Time

We have all surely had different and similar kinds of experiences when it comes to free time at school. The most common thing everybody was doing during the break times between the lessons was discussing things and playing games with friends. We all are familiar with playground games such as hopscotch, twist, swinging, jumping the rope, playing on the jumping gym, trading stickers etc. Then there are things that not all of us are familiar with, such as playing with marbles and pokemon cards or doing simple handycrafts (friendship bracelets etc). What was also different was the length of the break sessions. They varied from 5 to 30 minutes between our group members and between school levels.

When going to secondary school, there were no more playing games during the breaks. We were doing different things, such as going to the shop to buy something or going to see our other friends to a different, nearby school. Cell phones weren’t allowed for some of our group members – in this case, the students would use them during the breaks discreetly.

We consider free time being a vital part of school life since it gives us the opportunity to talk with peers and share our experiences at school, discussing what has happened during the day – what we had learned, what emotions we have experienced if we felt something had been unfair or particularly fun etc. As Pellegrini (1995) says, recess is a time when children have the chance to interact with minimal adult intervention, and it is a good opportunity for the teacher to observe spontaneous peer activities. This leads to the conclusion that recess is important for children’s social interaction. Children need to “blow off steam” during the school day. According to surplus energy theory, children accumulate surplus energy by sitting still for a long while, and they need to use physical activity to use up this energy. The physical activity is important for them to be able to concentrate on the school work again. (Pellegrini, 1995.)

Resources:

- Pellegrini, A. D. (Ed.) 1995. School Recess and Playground Behavior. Educational and Developmental Roles. State University of New York Press: New York

Summerhill School

What can we learn about the lesson “Summerhill School”?

The idea of the school “Summerhill School” is different and new. New and different ideas make us feel a little bit afraid and shake our own ideas of something.

It is important to criticize, also new ideas, but we can try to imagine just the idea behind the school. I think the basic idea of the school is that they try to have another view of how to learn things. They are starting from the interests of each student and not from the curriculum.

What I try to learn from these approaches is, to think about how children can learn subjects. Of course, it is not possible – imagine you as a teacher of 30 children – to let each student start to learn what he or she wants to learn. But we can try to think about our behavior as a teacher, about our ideas of how we will bring students to get interesting at a subject, about how we are teaching.

For example, we can try to start with interests of the students, like the history of the “Middle Ages”. With this subject, we can also include music or language – like “What were their idiomatic expressions?”.  

We can try to open us and the school system for such an idea of including subjects into the interests of the students and not teaching every subject just on its own.

Finally, it is about how we are learning, how the students going to learn and how we, as teachers, can try to catch the interests of the students and how we can fill them with enthusiasm for different subjects. 

Sixth category: Celebrations

During our primary education, we used to celebrate all kind of important events, such as: the books day, the Andalusian day, etc. But, we did not know the real meaning of doing that event. That’s why we should celebrate some events by explaining before the historical point of view. By this reason, every child will know the real significance of each event.

Celebrations were activities where almost everybody enjoyed and had good moments. The Peace’s day was important because we went to the courtyard with white clothes and doves of peace made by paper and colored by us. We sang some songs in order to demand the peace in the world. We also celebrated Carnivals but not all of us because in the religious schools this celebration was more limited. The Andalusia’s day was special because we usually ate the traditional breakfast “mollete” with oil and drew flags and sang the anthem. However, we can also talk about particular celebrations as our birthdays. Especially in the first years, we were looking forward to that day. We brought some sweets to our classmates and they sang to us the “Happy birthday” song. 

As we said, people still do not know the true meaning of these days that are celebrated, teachers should explain before the day comes, the historical facts and meanings so that everybody get some cultural notions.

One of the objectives is to foment the education in values and the mediation. There are a lot of reasons to include the celebrations in the school. We want to emphasize some of them, children can learn if they know celebrations, however also it is so important to practice it for the relevant learning; These activities have a powerful attraction that increases the motivation in the student (Agúndez, 2014).

In the LOE there are some celebrations that schools have to carry out, for instance, the day of the peace, the book’s day, the day of the Constitution or the day of the autonomous community (Agúndez, 2014)

We emphasize that teacher has to take the advantage of the celebrations of the “world days” to impart certain transversal themes. No center should forget about this kind of celebrations because they can have a great influence in pupils and also will involve them in the current aspects of our society. (Bisquerra, 2012)

Resources:

- Agúndez, D. (2014). Las celebraciones pedagógicas. Revista Supervisión, 21(31).

http://www.usie.es/SUPERVISION21/2014_31/02_articulos/02_05_art_dag.pdf

- Bisquerra, R. (2012). Orientación, tutoría y educación emocional. Los días mundiales (pp. 139-141). Madrid: Editorial Sintesis. 

Fifth category: Students' feelings

Feelings are clearly part of a school day since they are a part of our daily lives. We think that we all have experienced every feeling there is to feel during our school day: disappointment, joy, sadness, angriness, anxiety.. to name a few. This all depends on what kind of experiences we have at the time, and they leave a mark on us. In our good memories are included for example playground games with friends during a recession, group work in class or talking in free time.

Then there are memories which are not so good, such as being bullied or being left out from some games. Each of us experienced something like this in class, such as being laughed at for asking a question from the teacher or having to go to the headmaster’s office for not understanding a task in maths.

This, for example, can leave a mark on oneself. Months and years later you might still be afraid to ask questions because you don’t want to be laughed at. As Mendler (2001) says, a teacher should be able to create an environment without threats, answering questions without the fear of embarrassment. This will help students be more engaged and motivated (Mendler, 2001). This is what we, as becoming teachers, want to aim at.

One of our group members was reminded of an incident, where some students put another student (a small one) to a bin. First, this student also laughed at the situation, but he couldn’t come out from the bin on his own. When the teacher came to class, he helped him out from there. This incident wasn’t really discussed in class. We think it’s necessary to talk with the students about these kinds of issues: children need to know that school is not just about learning bits of information but also learning about important values and good behavior.

When thinking of the changes in students' lives, the transition from primary to secondary school includes the increase of bullying behaviour:

“In a nationwide survey of 6th through 10th graders, 24.2% reported being bullied once or twice, 8.5% reported being bullied sometimes, and 8.4% reported being bullied at least on a weekly basis (Nansel et al. 2001).” In comparison with our experiences, most of us can agree with it.


If we seek of something good in our bad experiences, we certainly always learn from them. We learn no to make the same mistake again if that's what caused our bad experience, and we think that bad experiences may also lead to better teaching by creatin a deeper sense of empathy, of going through same feelings as a student might be going through. As Dewey (1938) noted: "What [a person] has learned in the way of knowledge and skill in one situation becomes an instrument of understanding and dealing effectively with the situations that follow. The process goes on as long as life and learning continue". (Quoted by Craig, 2013, in Emotion and School: Understanding How the Hidden Curriculum Influences Relationships, Leadership, Teaching, and Learning by Riley, P., Gallant, A., & Newberry, M. (Ed.))


Resources:

- Birkett, Michelle, Dorothy L. Espelage, and Brian Koenig. "LGB and questioning students in schools: The moderating effects of homophobic bullying and school climate on negative outcomes." Journal of youth and adolescence 38.7 (2009): 989-1000.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-008-9389-1

- Mendler, A. N. (2001). Connecting with Students. Alexandria, VA: Assoc. for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

- Riley, P., Gallant, A., & Newberry, M. (2013). Emotion and School: Understanding How the Hidden Curriculum Influences Relationships, Leadership, Teaching, and Learning. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Fourth category: Methodology

Regarding several aspects, we can find lots of items that related to the methodological process.
After we enrolled at school the normal workday began for us. Normally we sat in class in a U-form, in lines, in groups, in pairs or alone, while the teacher was standing in front of us.
In primary school the teacher came to our class, so we did not have to move for each subject to another room.

Usually, the teacher introduced us in a new topic with a short movie or a story. After it, we got papers with the task we had to work individually or in groups. I remember that we learned the letters of the alphabet by writing down each letter again and again on a paper in different sizes. If it did not look well, we had to do it again.

When there was coming Easter, the Mother's day or Christmas we had more creative lessons where we did handicrafts in art or we went outside to pick up natural things to add them to our project (for example leaves), so we did different activities from what we were used to, but as we have said, at specific events or moments. Why not do it as a routine? Why not be able to enjoy nature at every moment? 

According to the punishment, there have been different ways. Some teachers let us write down about five hundred times a sentence, for instance: “I can not talk while the teacher is explaining.” Others screamed to us or let us go out of the class. Most times they gave us more homework, extra work, we had to stay an hour longer at school or they eliminated our break time, something that some authors describe as “psychological violence” that represents the 60.3% of the punishments (Durán & Ceja, 2015).

Focusing on the evaluation methods, we used to have one exam at the end of every unit and a final one at the end of the three terms. Also, we were evaluated during the classes, according to our behavior, the participation during the class and the class marks. At the end of every term, they gave us our marks of every subject, and in the final term, we got the average score of the three terms. However, it is a truth that most of the teachers paid more attention to the quantitative than the qualitative mark. In addition, sometimes they do not pay attention in the process of learning of the student, simply they take the quantitative mark.

The certificate at the end of the first and second year contained detailed descriptions. However, the third and fourth years certificate contained notes in each subject.

The next question is: How did we learn? Of course, depending on the teacher, the school and the group, but we can say that more than once we have been taught in a traditional way. The teacher explained the lesson and the students had to do the homework, sometimes in class but most of the times at home. The consequence was that we felt tired and bored doing every day the same. Why do not change the methodology? Some teachers feel fear to change it, especially old teachers that suffer “technophobia” that is fear to use the new technologies. But we have to accept that the educative technologies have to adapt to the new technologies in order to facilitate citizens' access to education (Torres, 2010). However, not only the new technologies are involved in this issue because we have to change the organization, the dynamics and make the classes more enjoyable for the students because the learning process should be an open process where each teacher apply the knowledge in different ways. 

Resources:

- Durán, M., Ceja, O. (2015).  La violencia del docente en las escuelas primarias del ciudad de puebla. Chinuamua. Retrieved from:
http://www.comie.org.mx/congreso/memoriaelectronica/v13/doc/2058.pdf

- Torres, S. (2010). La enseñanza tradicional de las ciencias versus las nuevas tendencias educativas. Educare, 14, 131-142. Retrieved from:
http://revistas.una.ac.cr/index.php/EDUCARE/article/view/1515/1435

Third category: Relationships

Primary school is the first time when the child gets to interact with a large number of peers, and the social contacts created at that time determines who we become. Studies have shown that social problems in relationships have an impact on student’s well-being and success in school. One of the major things that affect in children’s well-being at school is peer relationships. (Cowie, 2009.) Because the group in school is quite a sustainable one, especially the experiences experienced at this time have an impact on a child’s later development. Sometimes a positive atmosphere isn’t a given, so the teacher has to encourage children towards positive experiences in the peer group. (Salmivalli, 2006.)

Undoubtedly, teachers make a great impact in our lives – we spend many hours of our day at school, and the teacher is the adult who we have the contact with and who takes care of us. While remembering our schooling memories when it comes to teachers, we all felt lucky that we have had teachers who have been caring for our needs and who have listened to us. In primary school, we could tell our worries to our teachers and he/she would help to solve them. This wasn’t the case in secondary school anymore, though. Some of us didn’t have a specific class monitor, with whom we would spend the most time – the teacher would always change within subjects. 

When talking about the relationship between the students, we could say that most of us were in good relations with our classmates. Of course, there are always persons who we don’t like that much or get along very well, but it seems like in primary school basically, everybody was friends with everybody. One of our group members, though, was bullied during her journey to school – other students would pull her hair or laugh at her. What comes to the relationship between us and the other classes, most of us felt like we were “enemies” with the other classes – we would always compete with them – for example in football. 

Resources:

- Cowie, H. (2009). Peer Support Challenges School Bullying. In Carmel, C. & Cooper, P. (ed.) Promoting Emotional Education. Engaging Children and Young People with Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties. Support for Learning. Vol. 25 Issue 3. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, pp. 153-154

- Salmivalli, C. (2006). Vertaissuhteet ja lapsen sosioemotionaalinen kehitys. Julkaisussa Rajala, R. (toim.) Lapsen parhaaksi – tukea ja laatua aamu- ja iltapäivätoimintaan. Opetushallitus, pp. 40-42