“Children don’t just feel conflict, they breathe it”. Psychologist specialized in mediation and conciliation Javier Wilhelm highlights that when two families go through a conflict situation and their children share a class, this has a direct implication on the minors’ well-being. The school can play an important role as a link between the parties, but the key factor that will determine the extent of the consequences are the families involved. The way they manage their disagreement –with the emotions it entails– can lead to a serious estrangement between the children and, among adults, open a communicative abyss.

Of all the mistakes I've made in my maternal journey, of which there are many and varied, there has also been a great success: enrolling my children in the after-school club. It's the town's after-school club, called Globus Roig, and like all after-school clubs, they educate in leisure and, above all, they educate in something enormous: that the youngest have adolescents as role models who act as monitors, who play with them and take them on camps in exchange for nothing. Let's return to this concept so we don't overlook it. In. Exchange. For. Nothing. It is the maximum generosity in a world where adolescents have a reputation for not looking up from their phones and living in an infinite scroll without their own criteria. We value this refuge of young people who have decided to mortgage all their weekends and their holidays to be with our children. this refuge of young people who have decided to mortgage all their weekends and their holidays to be with our children.

In the school in Girona that I attended as a child, Carol Law Lee, of Chinese origin, was for a long time the only girl with parents from abroad. “I felt exotic. The older students would touch my hair and say it looked like threads!”, she recalls. Years later, however, another Chinese girl arrived, whom she “felt close to” and “was very eager to meet”.

A few weeks ago, the students of the Baldiri i Reixac School in Barcelona went on a school trip. The children in I5, second, and fourth grade did. Until last year, all grades went, but the teaching staff decided to reserve them only for the end of the cycle because it was becoming increasingly difficult to find teachers willing to go each year. They thought that the fact that not everyone had to go each year would lead to greater availability on the part of the teachers. Years ago, the opposite decision was made. The trips were held at the end of the cycle, and it was agreed to extend them to all grades. “We teachers attached great importance to the trips, but little by little we have been getting worn out,” comments a teacher from the center.

Salt is known today as the municipality with the lowest per capita income in Catalonia. Also one of the towns with the highest concentration of migrant population: nearly 40% of residents are of foreign nationality. But what headlines have overlooked in recent years is that almost half of this town's surface is still orchards and pastures. The Monar canal, parallel to the Ter river, marks the border between the built-up Salt and the agricultural zone. Few facilities surpass it, except for a large institute built on fertile land. Located on the border with Girona, surrounded by greenery and with magnificent views of the Mare de Déu del Mont, lies Vallvera. A secondary and vocational training center with more than 1,200 students, inaugurated in 2008, which contrasts with its surroundings by being a large gray sheet metal center with a concrete-filled courtyard. "In winter it's a refrigerator and in summer an oven, there's no in-between!", laments the director, Ferran Maimir, who started this academic year with a direction very focused on working for the renaturalization of the courtyard, but with a different method: that the students themselves build the shade with their hands.

It's 10:30 a.m. on a winter Friday, and when we arrive at 12-year-old Martín's room, we find him with his hospital teacher, Alba Sau. Together, they're trying to identify the fruit scent of each of the perfume bottles arranged on a tray. The young boy, who suffers from a rare metabolic disorder called sulfite oxidase deficiency, laughs every time he correctly identifies one of the fragrances, showing off his keen sense of smell. The day before, they had been painting, improvising a paintbrush with a straw and a pencil that Martín used in his mouth. "We try to adapt as much as possible to each child's tastes and interests to connect with them," Alba explains, while trying to set up Tobii, the tablet Martín uses to communicate through his eyes, on Martín's bedside table. "For me, it's essential that Martín can communicate, not only with me, but also with his mother and the healthcare staff; it's part of his recovery," she emphasizes.

We live in strange times: hatred has become a national pastime. It doesn't take much to ignite it: three headlines, two talk shows, and a couple of tweets, and suddenly half the country is judging the other half from the comfort of their sofas, with pre-packaged opinions. Curiously, in this race to point fingers, schools are always mentioned. As if the social fracture were the fault of a poorly corrected dictation or a badly presented media project.

Some families know exactly which school they want for their children, while others begin an intense research process after a positive pregnancy test. My first thought would be that the perfect school doesn't exist. Just like perfect parents and the perfect job don't exist. There will always be something that feels off, and you'll have to define your true red lines. I do think it's very important to consider different educational options and visit more than one school, whether at open houses or by having a personal interview. Let's be honest, if we go to different dealerships to buy a car, this infinitely more important task requires our time and a clear understanding of the school where we'll pre-enroll.

A school, like any complex human organization, needs leadership, direction, someone at the helm who takes the risk of making the final decisions. In the case of educational institutions, this doesn't mean going against the teamwork of the teaching staff. It's not that at all. A principal is someone who takes responsibility for representing the entire educational community: teachers, students, families, administrations, the surrounding community... Someone who, if they do it well, promotes internal and external dialogue, strives to retain talent and strengthen the team, looks after the working conditions of colleagues, seeks to strengthen the school's identity, and ensures consistency. Leading with intelligence, empathy, and credibility is as complicated as it is necessary. Not everyone is willing to do it, nor is it easy. Training is also necessary for leadership. And rewards. And the tools to do it.

A chemistry experiment at the El Entorno School in Porqueres resulted in three nine-year-old students suffering burns. The Emergency Medical Service (SEM) evacuated two of the injured in serious condition to Vall d'Hebron Hospital, one by helicopter and the other by ambulance, and the third with minor injuries to Josep Trueta Hospital in Girona. During the day, a boy and a girl were discharged from Trueta and Vall d'Hebron, respectively. The third injured student, a fourth-grade boy, remains hospitalized in the burn unit of the Barcelona hospital. According to sources consulted by ARA, the class was conducting the so-called "volcano experiment" outside the school. During the experiment, which is usually done with a plastic bottle containing a mixture of ingredients such as baking soda and vinegar, the bottle burst, and the liquid splashed onto some students, causing burns to three of them.

Once a week, seventy preschool and primary school children at the Betània-Patmos school in Barcelona's Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district participate in a midday chess session. This activity has been offered as an extracurricular activity by the school to students from the fourth grade onward since 2011. "Parents really like it because it helps clear their minds and concentrate. But the children are also drawn to it," says Uriel Jiménez, the school's extracurricular coordinator. He adds that this is because the instructors teach chess using a playful methodology. For this reason, he says, it's one of the extracurricular activities with a higher enrollment rate than dropout rate throughout the school year. The Betània-Patmos school is one of 150 educational centers in the metropolitan area where the Catalan Chess School (ECADE) teaches chess. In most schools, chess is offered as an extracurricular activity, although some centers also hold regular classes during school hours and others offer occasional workshops. ECADE was founded in 2022 through the merger of two existing chess schools: the Barcelona Chess School and the Miguel Illescas Chess School. It also functions as an academy, with around 80 children attending afternoon classes at its premises, and as a club, with 40 members. In addition, they organize chess, board game, and strategy camps during Christmas, Easter, and summer breaks. In total, they have 38 instructors on staff who teach chess to 4,000 students each year.

Those of us who work with children in the early stages of education celebrate and applaud the fact that the latest curriculum reform of 2023 affirmed from the outset that "the early childhood education curriculum integrates the first and second cycles into a single educational stage with its own identity." This is a demand that has been made by the educational reform movements, with the journal CHILDHOOD As a keynote speaker, he has championed and defended his position for decades. The problem is that these good intentions, when they come down to earth, end up being just wishful thinking, because the reality is that we have a completely fragmented political landscape.

"Yes, I'm a teacher. A high school teacher." "Oh, sigh, I couldn't." Zero interest. Absent gaze. "I'm also a journalist." "A journalist? Wow. And where do you write?" "Exactly. I'm the same person, and I've dedicated my whole life to teaching, but I always end up talking about my journalistic side, which seems—only seems—more exciting. My real job, the day-to-day work, and my true calling doesn't generate any interest or isn't considered a prestigious profession. People look at teachers with pity and almost offer their condolences for having a profession that until relatively recently was admired, valued, and loved."

The Tres Pins School in Barcelona is located in the heart of Montjuïc mountain. The tranquility of this idyllic setting has been disrupted since last October by a man who has been throwing stones at the school, neighbors, families, and buses, as has been reported. The world on RAC1 And the ARA has confirmed it. Since then, the families have lived in fear: "We've been living in fear for months," explains M., the mother of a girl at the school and a member of the AFA. Now the Mossos d'Esquadra have arrested the individual who matched the described profile, and they assure that, since the arrest, "no similar incidents have been recorded."

At least ten people died Tuesday at a high school in Canada after a person opened fire inside the building in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, according to the EFE news agency, citing police sources. Among the dead was the suspected shooter, who committed suicide, police said. Authorities have identified the shooter as an 18-year-old woman with mental health issues, but have not released details about a possible motive. Officers arrived at the school two minutes after receiving an alert, at 1:20 p.m. (local time), and found six people dead inside. Two more bodies were found at a nearby residence in an incident that appears to be related to the shooting. Another person died while being transported to a hospital.

With one daughter in the first year of secondary school, another in the third year of primary school, and a third on the way, Sonia still finds time to dedicate to the Parents' Association (AFA) at her second daughter's school. She's on the board along with two other mothers, with whom she shares the responsibilities. In their case, they're in charge of organizing and managing after-school programs, including supervision, the school cafeteria—whose menus are still being decided—and extracurricular activities, as well as collaborating with the school when needed. She does it out of altruism and values ​​the palpable sense of solidarity. "It's hard work, but manageable," Sonia explains. She sees it as a form of political activism for the benefit of everyone, since their decisions ultimately have political implications, and it's essential that the board shares certain values, such as inclusion, to avoid disagreements. "There are times when you'd like to throw everything into action, honestly," she adds, "times when you think, 'Why am I even here?'"

I remember perfectly when, during recess four years ago, a colleague showed us artificial intelligence on his phone. Apparently, he'd heard about it on the radio and, out of curiosity, had tried it out. In front of us, he asked it to compare Modernism and Noucentisme and even to generate a poem in the style of Maragall. Before we'd even finished our coffee, a long and exhaustive piece of work, just as he'd asked, started appearing on the phone screen. The poem too. It was like something out of a magic trick. What was the catch? Who was writing all this? We immediately saw that the tool was fantastic, but also dangerous for the world of education.

Despite the truce signed last October, Israel continues to kill Palestinians. Specifically, the Israeli army carried out an attack this Friday on a school in Gaza City, killing five people, mostly children, according to a statement from the local civil defense. The school is located in the northeastern part of the city and was being used as a shelter for displaced people. Under the pretext of alleged "immediate threats," Israeli troops have killed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since October 10, with the total death toll reaching 395 in its latest official count on Friday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. For its part, the Israeli army clarified in a statement that its troops "identified several suspicious individuals in command structures west of the Yellow Line" in the northern Gaza Strip and then "fired on the suspects to eliminate the threat." The Palestinian statement emphasizes that civil defense teams and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs "completed the recovery of five bodies," in addition to an as-yet-undetermined number of wounded, in the Al Tufah neighborhood, according to EFE. In fact, it specifies that the "majority" of these fatalities were children. Meanwhile, the army of Benjamin Netanyahu, accused of genocide for its actions in Gaza, asserts that it is "aware of the information regarding casualties in the area and the details are under review." It adds that it "regrets any harm to uninvolved people and is working to mitigate the damage as much as possible." However, according to the Gaza authorities, it is a "serious violation of international humanitarian law" and a breach of the ceasefire. In this regard, they have again urged the international community and the UN to protect civilians and guarantee the safety of shelters and humanitarian personnel. According to these sources, the Israeli army has even obstructed the arrival of ambulances.

When the management team at the Ítaca School in Manresa began developing the school's educational project, they didn't know exactly how the celebrations should be, but they were very clear about what they didn't want. For example, they wanted to avoid at all costs a Castañada celebration that was the same every year of a child's nine years in primary school. They set themselves the challenge, therefore, of rethinking the holidays as a learning objective and adapted them to the needs and possibilities of each educational stage.

Since the major Asian platforms have entered the European market selling directly to consumers, many small local businesses, both brick-and-mortar and online, have struggled. That's just how the market is, and everyone is free to choose where they shop.