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.

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.

Throughout my schooling, I was one of the few children of immigrants in the classroom. My parents came from Morocco, and I was born and raised in Barcelona. Like so many Catalans, I grew up watching and enjoying Club Super3, where they aired shows like... Dragon Ball and DoraemonThanks to this audiovisual content, many of us children who didn't come from Catalan-speaking families became familiar with Catalan, which is now part of our identity. Growing up as children of immigrants isn't easy. You're born into a very complicated economic and social reality, sometimes compounded by episodes of discrimination and racism. Like many young people who have shared the same baggage, we became aware of the importance of education as a way to progress socially and aspire to a better life. Now, little by little, the result of these individual efforts is allowing many of us to become teachers, doctors, writers, and engineers. Now that I work as a secondary school teacher, I find that classrooms are more culturally diverse than in my day, but I'm still one of the few children of immigrants who are teachers. According to data from the Statistical Institute of Catalonia, 225,000 students in the education system are foreign-born. This figure doesn't include all Catalan students with immigrant roots. Students with a migratory background are the group that presentsMore school failure in CataloniaThis phenomenon refers to students who do not obtain their ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education) diploma. Andreu Domingo and Jordi Bayona are two researchers who have analyzed this phenomenon. In their research, they differentiate between foreign students born outside Catalonia and Catalan students with an immigrant parent. Regarding foreign students, their poor results are explained by their late entry into the education system, which makes it difficult for them to adapt. Both researchers focus on understanding why Catalan students with foreign roots obtain worse academic results. The socioeconomic problems they face are one of the reasons. Another point to highlight is the direct correlation between a higher concentration of students of foreign origin in certain schools and a high rate of academic failure. This leads to what the authors call the "neighborhood effect," in which the negative circumstances of the student's environment influence their academic performance and future prospects. Ultimately, they end up reproducing the social conditions and inequalities of their parents, and their situation of poverty and social stagnation becomes chronic, with little room for improvement.

Teachers are on strike with the astonishing support of the politicians who have been governing Catalan education in recent years. Esther Niubó asserted that this strike "requires the full support of the Catalan government." Teachers' discontent is real, and it's good that it's being acknowledged. But is it understood that the problem cannot be solved by propping up the system with band-aids while simultaneously asking schools to resolve all the issues that social change is bringing to the forefront? These issues affect the relationship between families and schools, the meaning and purpose of knowledge, the status of authority, and ultimately, the role of schools in society.

"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."

As a parent and teacher, the start of the new school year raises questions to which I have no clear answers. For example, will students remember anything they learned when they return from vacation? Will we be able to make classes more than just fun? Will they want to learn when everything is just a click away? Will we be able to instill in them a culture of effort and the need to interpret, memorize, and acquire new concepts? Will we have families on our side, or will they be suspicious when we demand our rights? Will we be able to ensure that bureaucracy doesn't drain teachers' energy and that they can focus on student progress?

As teacher And as a mother, I confess that September is my favorite month of the year. We're back at it again. I love choosing a new planner and starting the school year with the excitement of doing everything right. It's like when I was little, I'd open a new notebook, write a pretty title, and write the first two pages in beautiful handwriting. September is like that; it's the month of good intentions, blank pages, and long days that still smell of summer. Even our children are thinking, "This year I'll definitely do everything right and get great grades." We'll talk again in June.

I write as the director of an educational center, with the discomfort of self-criticism. The recent error in the allocation of teaching positions It's not just a technical issue; it's a reflection of a system that, for years, has been plagued by serious structural deficiencies. However, this precariousness has often been disguised by an equally worrying problem: the proliferation of smoke tasks. These smoke tasks are not an accident, but rather a strategy used to give the appearance that things are being done and to hide an uncomfortable reality: the lack of real resources in schools. And, despite being aware of this, we administrators have learned to live with them.

It's exam day at the Lycée Française Saint-Exupéry in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. Very close to the central market, a hub of commerce, bustle, and shouting, stands a wall with double barbed wire and little signage. From the outside, it doesn't look like a high school, but when you walk through the door, neither does it. There's very little activity and a lot of silence. In fact, it's Baccalaureate day. selectivity, an exam such as the selectivity that allows students to continue higher education and that puts an end to the stage of high school (equivalent to high school).

In China, you find well-endowed universities with a hierarchical structure and motivated students, but you won't find debates. Joan Cortada works in the Spanish department at one of these universities in Beijing. The Beijing Institute of Technology, where he teaches and also lives, is a modern campus in the south of the Chinese capital. The facilities are enviable, although it's surprising to find some tanks and military equipment on display along the campus's main avenues; the university has a section dedicated to the development of military technology.

The Liceu Conservatory Foundation has temporarily suspended a professor "from all teaching activities" after a student accused him of groping. According to a statement, the school has initiated an internal investigation to "clarify the facts and take appropriate measures." The Newspaper has published that there could be others, the foundation has decided to temporarily remove the teacher. They did so after "reviewing the matter internally." He had been at the school for three decades.

One A teacher at the Mina Institute was injured after being attacked. with a knife this Tuesday at the end of class, according to the newspaper The Country. The victim received two stab wounds: one in the back that did not touch his body, and another in the buttocks. In both cases, the stab wounds were considered shallow, so much so that police sources explained to ARA that the attacker "did not intend to kill." The teacher was taken to the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona and his life is not in danger.

VA was a physical education teacher at Les Corts Secondary School for less than three months, at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year. During that time period, the comments and groping that have led to complaints from nine students are believed to have occurred. All were in the first year of compulsory secondary school except for one, who was in the third year. The case is being tried this week in the Barcelona Court of Appeals, and the man faces a request for 45 years in prison from the Prosecutor's Office for continuous sexual abuse of minors. He, however, has completely exonerated himself with a statement full of the words "never," "false," and "absolutely false."

Denmark is one of the countries that, year after year, leads the rankings in student competency, with an education system that is characterized by being completely free from primary school to university, and which differs significantly from the teaching system in Catalonia. Carolina Diarte (46 years old, born in Castellar del Vallès), knows this well. She has lived in the Scandinavian country for 18 years, where she has worked as a secondary school teacher for 15 years. She didn't expect to end up teaching in a high school in Denmark, but after meeting her Danish partner in Japan, they decided to live together in Copenhagen. Carolina had studied translation and interpreting in Barcelona, ​​​​which helped her find work as a teacher.

The opportunity to spend a few years in the land of the pharaohs doesn't come along often, so when it presented itself in 2022 to Alba Ruiz, a 34-year-old teacher from Mataró, and her husband, with whom they had just had a child, they decided to take advantage of it. He had been offered the option of temporarily moving to Egypt for work, and she requested a leave of absence from the school where she had been working for eight years, San José in her hometown, so she could travel. "It was now or never," she explains.

Mireia Oró is a 36-year-old Barcelona native who has lived in the United Kingdom for almost fourteen years. She teaches at a primary school in a very idiosyncratic area of East London. Mulberry Canon Barnett Primary School is a co-educational public school for students aged 4 to 11. It is located next to Brick Lane, the street that immortalized Monica Ali in the novel of the same name. This street is also known for its curry restaurants, the smell of which can be felt everywhere, and for its markets. vintage. Besides, It is very close to Commercial Street and Whitechapel Street, two arteries in the areas of Spitalfields and Whitechapel, respectively, closely linked to the historical and legendary figure of Jack the Ripper, who chose his victims in a pub, The Ten Bells, at number 84 Commercial Street.

"You will hang the notes in the classroom"Això ho trobarem al campus virtual?". sporadically with the company on the coast, "recognizes Martina, a university student. 80% of her professors have the contingut to the virtual classroom, and therefore, approximately the most important thing is the material that is explained to the classroom. La Ioana, 22 years old, is also a university student and, in her home, 70% of the contingut that is The virtual classroom is the one the teacher gives. "You can pass without joining the class because you repeat the material," he admits. At Batxillerat, he recalls, there were more notes because it couldn't be used as a study technique. "It's changed because studying the capitals of Europe isn't the material, it's giving a reflective class."

Daniel Turienzo (1987) has worked as a teacher in different autonomous communities and has also taught at various Spanish universities. He now works as an assistant to the Ministry of Education at the Spanish Embassy in Morocco. Together with Professor Jesús Rogero, they have written Educa Fakes, A book that aims to expose the 50 lies and half-truths about Spanish education.