Gabriel Ginebra is part of the Regional Expert Council of the TUI (Time Use Initiative) and will be one of the speakers at the Time Use Week that is being held from October 19th to 21st in Barcelona. He is part of a family of twelve siblings, he has raised seven children with his wife, and now he has two grandchildren.

Something uncomfortable happened to Sweden: for years it lived off the prestige of an educational system that was no longer achieving the same results. PISA 2012 made a problem difficult to ignore: 478 points in mathematics, 483 in reading, and 485 in science. But six years later they were 502, 506, and 499. The average explains only part of the story. In mathematics, between 2012 and 2018, the percentage of students below the basic level fell by 8.3 percentage points, and those reaching the highest levels grew by 4.6. TIMSS pointed in the same direction: Swedish 8th-grade students went from 484 points in 2011 to 501 in 2015.

This weekend it seems it might rain, yet there are plenty of proposals to enjoy with the family. As always, we have prepared a selection of activities for you to do with your children on October 16th, 17th, and 18th, such as going to the cinema to see a premiere, participating in some of the Barcelona Dibuixa activities, or enjoying a family poetry recital at Foix.

We are at the door of a school in the Maresme region. A group of families waiting for the children to leave are talking about the difficulties of fitting in extracurricular schedules. "It's an impossible puzzle," complains Sara. "There are companies that schedule against each other; the music school coincides in hours with the soccer club," says Eduardo. In the conversation, there are also those who claim that there are extracurricular activities that require a minimum of three days a week, even for six-year-old children. "They do it because it's a business issue," they opine.

Crying uncontrollably when losing, being unable to wait for commercials to end, or shouting because they are not allowed to go out with their friends are situations that show a certain difficulty in managing frustration. "Frustration is a skill that must be trained day by day, because we will encounter it throughout our entire life," asserts the educational coach Mar Milán.

Three summers ago we traveled to Croatia and Montenegro and we drove around in a rented car. To take a shortcut, we passed through Bosnia. We had no problem entering, but when it came time to leave, there was an error with Laura's ID card.

When we were told that you would be a girl, we were clear: your name would be Mercè. Like the co-patron saint of your city and the most universal Catalan writer. You are the first Mercè in the family and one of the few babies born in 2026 who can celebrate their name day dancing with the Giants of El Pi and the Giants of the City. The reaction of those around us when we announced it finally convinced us. We realized that, besides Joseps, Joans and Maries, there used to be Mercès in every home too. Everyone told us with a smile that they had a grandmother or an aunt with that name, but that they didn't know any girl who was named like you. "We'll tell Collboni to give us extra points to get into daycare and to save us a spot on the City Hall balcony to watch the procession every September," I remember we said jokingly with your father.

Students in 4th year of ESO and high school (artistic or humanistic modality) from Girona, Salt, and Banyoles have the opportunity to get closer to the theater with the activity Dramaturgy Tournament for Institutes. An initiative that offers a panoramic view of all the steps involved in a dramaturgical creation. This proposal is part of A Tempo-Arts and Education, the educational project of the La Ciutat Invisible Foundation and Temporada Alta, which aims to bring the arts closer to all children and young people in the territory and encourage their active participation in cultural life. The Tournament is organized jointly with Tramoia Cultura.

Money has a particularity: it is essential to support a family, but it remains one of the topics that is hardest to talk about. How much does each person earn? What belongs to both? What can be spent without consulting the other? What debts are there? What savings? And, above all, what happens when one of the members of the couple decides that a part of this information is theirs alone?

A long weekend is approaching, and with these storms it is very tempting to stay at home, but if the sun comes out, go back to enjoying the outdoors, which surely as a family you also need. As always, we have prepared a selection of activities for you to do with your children on October 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th, such as watching puppets at La Puntual, celebrating the Train Festival at the Railway Museum in Móra la Nova, or enjoying reading at the Girocòmic Fair in Girona.

It is usually easy to detect when a child needs to go to the doctor. Fever, rashes, vomiting, wounds... These are obvious symptoms that a boy or girl needs medical attention. It is more difficult to realize when a boy or girl needs psychological attention. The symptoms are not as obvious to most, and, furthermore, there is still ignorance and taboo regarding mental health. This puts many parents in doubt as to when they should turn to a psychology professional to help their sons or daughters.

“Every morning I give breakfast to the early childhood education students, from I3 to I5, and the breakfasts of the little ones are always: Oreos, potato chips, chocolate snacks, and low-quality pastries. Every morning I think there should be a law that protects me from having to poison the children. For that, I would indeed go on an indefinite strike; it is worse than not knowing how to add, because they will get sick,” explains to Criatures Estel Marín, a teacher at a high-complexity school in Barcelona.

How to start a school year like this one, different due to the circumstances experienced last year? I am talking about the pending subject from June, the unease that the strikes, boycotts, and disagreements left behind: disappointed families and PTAs, students who have felt vulnerable after losing educational experiences they were looking forward to, tired teachers, and divided teams...

Since I became a father, I no longer go to the bar to spend the afternoon. Having children changed me one hundred percent. I stopped smoking joints and growing weed. Now I don't even smoke tobacco and I don't have alcohol at home. My habits changed radically because I started waking up early to take the kids to school and I would go pick them up in the afternoon. My partner worked and I, since I had a creative job, had more flexible hours and was in charge of taking them to extracurricular activities, making lunch and dinner.

When I was eighteen, I didn't know what I wanted to be. It crossed my mind to be a flight attendant and I even weighed the possibility of becoming a criminologist, but the fact that I could reach university thanks to the teachers who had helped me throughout my schooling ended up steering me towards education. And this year, Raquel Elá celebrates her twenty years as a teacher in Catalonia.

Those of us who work with children from zero to six years old celebrated greatly that the new education decree considered in a clear and transparent way that the zerosis (I borrow this beautiful neologism from my colleague and teacher Maite Pujol) is a single stage, with its own identity.

First weekend of October in sight, and with a lot of proposals to enjoy as a family. As always, we have prepared a selection of activities for you to do with your children on October 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, such as eating cookies in Camprodon, drawing a more sustainable future at the Education for Sustainability Festival, or experiencing Toca Festa, the family day at L’Auditori that seeks to bring music closer to everyone through a participatory, playful, and open experience.

The arrival of the internet, web pages, social networks, and artificial intelligence. New technologies and new ways of communicating have evolved in just a few years and have entered every dimension of our lives. Also in that of the youngest, and consequently, in the classrooms. If many educational centers have considered that it was necessary to leave mobile phones out of the classroom, along with WhatsApp, Instagram, and TikTok notifications, the challenge now is what to do with artificial intelligence and the chatbots that students access from the laptops they work with in class and at home. And not because new technologies cannot be integrated into the pedagogical reality of each center, but because, right now, the pedagogy that should be practiced is, precisely, about the use and abuse of these tools and how they affect learning.

I have started the school year seeing countless photos posted by my friends with teased hair and dressed in the synthetic neon-colored tracksuits typical of the eighties. It has been a viral trend on social media where people of all ages have asked artificial intelligence for an image that evokes this iconic decade. Our aesthetic has changed a lot, but I'll warn you that the school keeps the desks with greenish iron legs and a drawer underneath where chewing gum still gets stuck. Years pass, school furniture remains.

When I was writing the book, the stories that impacted me the most were those in which parents lost their children not because of death, but due to circumstances caused by the parents themselves.