When Maria (19 years old) started her first year of high school, she dropped all her extracurricular activities: “I was so stressed that just thinking about the hours I would have to dedicate to them made it clear to me, but it was a terrible decision; before the end of the course, I started to feel anxious, I spent the day studying”, she recalls. Now that she is finishing her first year of physiotherapy studies, she admits that she would do it very differently. In fact, when he started second year of high school, he picked up an extracurricular activity again, and little by little he found the balance between studying, leisure, spending time with friends, and taking care of himself. “I dedicated fewer hours to studying but I was more productive and happier”, she states. The false time thieves

What happened to Maria is common: adolescence arrives and the number of hours dedicated to extracurricular activities plummets. “Often the changes start with the type of extracurriculars they do in secondary school, which tend to be more geared towards training”, comments Òscar Bretau, emotional counselor and coach at Escola IPSE in Barcelona. In general, English and sports practice are the most widespread, although girls dedicate fewer hours to physical activity. During high school, when students tend to feel the pressure to achieve good academic results, it is recommended to “find a certain balance between studies and extracurriculars.” We must stop believing that “tivities done outside of class time are a waste of time,” points out Bretau. But he also adds that we cannot lose sight of the fact that a brain that is too busy and stressed does not perform adequately. “If all free time is used to achieve goals, performance will decrease and they will self-sabotage.” Besides recommending extracurriculars that can be a breath of fresh air, Bretau recalls the importance of doing nothing and sleeping a minimum of eight hours: “It is impossible for them to perform if they have not rested enough.” Fewer group activities and more 'scrolling'

Joan Carles Folia, educational advisor and coach, explains that it is common for young people to stop doing extracurricular activities upon reaching adolescence: “Around 11 or 12 years old, social bonds change, there is a hormonal explosion, and their interests begin to change”. Bretau also believes that there are significant differences between this generation of adolescents and previous ones: “Now they have the infinite scroll at their fingertips, which is very harmful to all brains but especially to the adolescent brain”. Technology, which is now presented as an alternative for non-class hours, attracts more attention from adolescents than any other sports, cultural, or leisure activity.

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“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.

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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.

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"Biel, who is ten years old, does extracurricular English classes three days a week; kung fu, two days; parkour, one day, and music, three days. As part of his music activities, he plays piano, trumpet, musical theory, and two combos," explains Anna Aparicio, his mother. Biel dedicates between 11 and 12 hours to extracurricular activities per week. He is one of the 83% of children in Catalonia between the ages of 6 and 15 who participate in them. the study The pros and cons of extracurricular participation, published in 2023 by Aliança Educació 360. On the contrary, only 17% of children do not participate in any activity, 140,000 children in Catalonia. "These activities outside of school improve self-esteem, children can discover things they are good at and that make them feel better, they improve their social skills and have a better self-image," says Sylvie Pérez, a professor in the psychology and educational sciences department at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

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If you walk into Alex's room today, you might find anything. Any day now, I'll find an Ondas Award under the bed. He's very messy. Plus, he has this strange ability to make you believe things are more or less in their place, but when you open the closet or drawers, you see everything is a mess. Gina's room is tidier, although I think she's slowly picking up some of her brother's bad habits.

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At the Universitat Pompeu Fabra they are preparing what they consider to be an "educational revolution". In two years' time, students will have half or fewer lectures and more group sessions in which the teacher will be a coach or tutor, fewer multiple-choice exams and more reflection and participation in class. Inspired by the wave of educational transformation that for a decade has changed schools and institutes in the country and also by how the best universities in the world, such as MIT and Stanford, work, the UPF wants to move towards a university model which "faces the future".

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