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.

I will tell you a real anecdote.A close relative submitted their final master's thesis a month ago. The center ran the thesis through Turnitin, a program that calculates the probability that a thesis was generated by AI. If it's very high, they reject it and require it to be redone. It came out at 8%.The thing is that when we received the correction from the tutor, it seemed a bit strange to us. It was too impeccable and with somewhat baroque expressions. Strangely precise points to correct. How strange, we said to ourselves! We uploaded it to a detector. Result: 80% probability of being AI. I promise it's true.It's no reproach! I think what the tutor did is perfect, as long as he had read the work and polished the AI's correction. But the anecdote shows us that it is absurd to try to expel artificial intelligence from the educational system.It happened with the calculator, and with the internet. And with Google! Do you remember when it was forbidden to use search engines for schoolwork? Little by little we saw that the issue was not spending three hours looking for a piece of data that could be found in thirty seconds. The important thing, from an educational point of view, was to know what to do with that data.Introducing AI into the educational system is quite a challenge. We must differentiate between using a tool and using thought. A student can use AI and force themselves to order ideas, compare approaches, correct an argument, imagine examples, or improve a complex theory. To think!The problem is the student who doesn't think, only copies or pretends a competence and delivers an empty text.So before he will have to learn to write, of course. You cannot put a child in front of an AI before they learn to write well, to read, to order ideas, to sustain arguments... Just as you don't teach to use a calculator before knowing the times tables, we will have to introduce AI after the student has achieved these skills.Once this threshold is overcome, introducing AI will allow us to develop in our young people the skills that are already most in demand in the labor market: judging, refining, correcting, reinterpreting, contrasting, personalizing…Therefore, this is not about whether the student can use AI. The question is at what age they start using it, how they should use it, and to develop which skills. We will have to design exercises in which AI raises new skills: asking for processes, demanding intermediate versions, introducing oral debate, having a student explain why they have accepted a suggestion and why they have rejected another.This is the future. And it will require great masters... in person!

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.

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.

I have always thought that in our profession it is very important to value the meaning of the words we use both to address children and young people and to relate to each other, teachers and families.

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.

Where is the line drawn between rights? Between the legitimate and shared right of teachers to demand decent working conditions and the right of children to fully enjoy their educational process, including outside the classroom? When these two rights conflict, the answer cannot be that one is left hanging. Children's rights are non-negotiable, nor can they be used as leverage in a conflict they did not create and over which they have no power.

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."

Not a day goes by without current events giving us a reason to think deeply about the state of the country and arrive at some pessimistic provisional conclusions.

Diversity, as actress Mina El Hammani said in an interview, is reality. In and of itself, it is neither good nor bad, but rather a characteristic of today's world and of open, globalized societies. There's no need to exalt or stigmatize it; in my opinion, if it exists, what we need to do is recognize it in the sense of admitting that we come from different backgrounds, religions, cultural traditions, and phenotypes. And recognition doesn't come, as in multicultural societies, from exalting symbolic elements to the detriment of the material conditions in which people live. As children of immigrants, we don't want to be turned into a bright spot that brightens a supposedly uniform landscape, but rather to be equal in rights and duties to other citizens. And as workers, we want our economic contribution to be valued. Celebrating diversity, as anthropologist Sílvia Carrasco said the other day at the meeting of Feminists of Catalonia, without providing resources is like launching empty slogans that do nothing to improve things or solve the specific problems that exist in certain social contexts. In Catalonia, we have no shortage of plans to promote inclusion and grounding, and I don't know how many other things expressed in convoluted language that no one understands, a bureaucratic cacophony of good intentions that often remain on paper.

For four years, from 14th to second grade, Martí had the same tutor at the public school where he attends. The boy formed a strong bond with the teacher, but his mother—and indeed most families—believed a change was necessary, mainly so the children would learn other ways of teaching and interacting. However, the truth is that it was fortunate that he was able to make the transition from preschool to elementary school with the same teacher, since the change of grade took Martí's strength, and maintaining this familiar figure made it less burdensome. Marc's daughter, Aurora, attends a Montessori school. There, students have the same tutor for three consecutive years, but several situations led to a loss of trust from the family toward the teacher, which ended with the demand for a change of tutor.

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.

The rise of far-right thinking in our society has consequences that also affect life in schools. But what we should ask ourselves is whether we, at school, are sufficiently effective in counterbalancing this ideological trend, or whether we are unwittingly fueling it.

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.

June arrives and the topic of whether it's necessary to give gifts to teachers comes up again. I even asked ChatGPT what he thought, and he said, "It's a nice gesture if it's something simple and done with respect." Of course, give a gift to whoever you want, that's all that's missing. You can offer a thoughtful gift to the yoga teacher, the neighbor who keeps your packages, or even give some flowers to the teacher. bun From the recreation your son loves so much and this year he says he's folding. The fact that we're questioning the art of making others happy makes me seriously consider what we've become. I sincerely tell you that giving makes me very happy. Even happier than receiving gifts because I never know what face to make, and it always makes me suffer that the other person thinks I didn't like it. Am I in favor of giving gifts? Always, yes.

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.