Like penguins is an autofiction show, in which I tell the story of Helena, who is me. In it, I explain why I became a clown.

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.

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.

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.

Money has a peculiarity: 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?

“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.

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.

Culture, educational leisure and transport face the start of the 2026-27 academic year with uncertainty. The reason is the stoppage of activities outside the classroom, which threatens an impact that goes well beyond schools. Still without concrete data on the extent of the effects, families, companies, associations, entities and experts warn of the educational, economic and social consequences of the temporary pressure measures by education professionals, who are demanding labor improvements.While negotiations with the Department of Education are not bearing fruit due to the unions' standoff, which, despite the agreement signed at the end of the school year, continue their standoff with the Government, the cultural sector is already starting to put numbers to the impact of the stoppage on school activities. In the world of performing arts, Óscar Rodríguez, a board member of ADETCA, the association of private Catalan theaters, explains that, on average, private theaters are recording 50% fewer school bookings compared to last year. In Barcelona, however, the drop is even more pronounced: "The figures are falling between 85 and 90% compared to last year in theaters like the Tantarantana or the Autèntica".ADETCA respects the demands of education professionals and ensures that it agrees with them, but warns that the situation "is directly harming a key sector for the culture of children and young people." It is not just a question of numbers and bookings, but also, Rodríguez remarks, "the undoing of an authentic tool for training and transformation."

That a child feels safe is essential for their development, a duty for the welfare society and a longing of families. But when we live in a world where bad news arrives everywhere, it is more difficult to maintain the sense of security.Wars, AI threat, climate emergency, floods, weather alerts, emergency kits... We want to protect them and spare them any suffering, but, at the same time, it is not a solution to deceive them by saying that it is all a lie.How do we do it? Two ideas:The first would be to lower the noise of the alarm: a smoke detector warns us when there is a fire. Let's imagine that this alarm rang every day: we would end up living stressed, scared, and in a state of alert. This is what happens to children if we let all the bad news reach them, especially if we have not prepared them or their brain to understand when the danger is real, exaggerated, or fake news.That is why it is important to reduce screen time and, above all, try to control what reaches them. If we know what they have seen or listen to the news with them, we can provide context, contribute critical thinking, and prevent them from ending up frightened by the catastrophism or exaggeration that some media outlets often use.And the second would be to strengthen them from within: avoiding all worries for them is overprotecting them, which ends up leaving them unprotected because we waste opportunities to train their resilience, adaptability, and inner strength. It would be like putting them in a bubble so they never feel fear, and when one day that fear arrived, they wouldn't know how to manage it because they hadn't been trained.Information, context and resources

Children are much stronger than we usually think. Let's trust them, because adaptability is an innate capacity of human nature. We just have to try not to annul it while we educate. Parents should, first, stop, look at them, and ask them: "What have you understood from what you just heard? What is it that worries you about this news?"Fear grows when there is uncertainty, that is to say, when information is missing, or when we only have a part of the information, the bad part. Completing it, contextualizing it, and helping them to think is educating them in inner strength.I remember that a couple of years ago, during the severe spring drought, a very distressed 5th-grade group arrived at the summer camp. They told me that it wasn't worth the effort or thinking about the future because the world would end before they turned thirty. They were convinced that, due to climate change, we would all die of thirst. I asked them: "And in countries where there is a desert, how do they manage? Do they all die of thirst?" They looked at each other in surprise and answered no. I remember how their expressions changed and some smiled. I explained to them that humans are extraordinary beings, also capable of doing beautiful things, of adapting to circumstances, of inventing solutions, and of overcoming enormous challenges.I believe that here lies our responsibility as adults: we cannot promise our children that nothing bad will ever happen, but we can train them so they know they will have resources to face these situations, such as pausing before a piece of news, thinking critically, asking questions to calm down, and feeling that the world is a safe place to grow up and live in.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends allowing at least three years between one pregnancy and another to favor the physical and emotional recovery of the woman between both gestations, and several scientific studies state that the ideal age gap between siblings would be between 1 and 4 years. However, as we know: theory is one thing, and practice is something quite different. Just ask Laura and Joan, a blended family where he brought a daughter, Emma, who in January, at 13 years old, became the big sister to the couple's first child together, Agnès. The age gap, however, was not the main headache for both parents when considering expanding the family; for Laura, the concern was “thinking that Emma had grown up until then as an only child and not knowing if having siblings would really make her happy.” Joan, on the other hand, was worried about not knowing what his eldest daughter's reaction would be, as well as “the uncertainty of knowing if she would accept her for all intents and purposes as a sister even if they did not have the same mother.”

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At what point did quantum physics go from being a theoretical revolution to a force capable of transforming or even destroying the world? It may seem like a complex question to answer, but it is an entirely necessary approach in times of war and polarization. The Doctor of Quantum Optics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and science communicator Sònia Fernández-Vidal (Barcelona, 1978) concludes the successful trilogy The Door of the Three Locks with the prequel titled The Shadow of the Two Suns (Destino). Aimed at a young audience, the author once again turns to fiction to put one of the great debates of our time on the table: what has led human beings to the development of nuclear energy and the atomic bomb? Despite being a story with fictional characters, Fernández-Vidal incorporates tangible certainties and figures of 20th-century science.

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My character is a real person, Verónica Estay. As an actress, playing someone real is quite a challenge. When she saw my work, she was very happy. She told me that there were moments when she felt that I was more her than she was herself.

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This summer that is now ending has undoubtedly been one of the strangest I remember as a teacher. It is a summer that has come after a very turbulent school year, with mobilizations that have certainly been historic, but which have left us exhausted.

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The school year begins, and with it, families set in motion an almost perfect machinery: the fashionable backpack, the wonderfully covered books, schedules squared to the millimeter, and WhatsApp groups in full swing. We try to anticipate everything so that our children begin school calmly and without difficulties. But, sometimes, in this legitimate attempt to protect them, we are literally leaving them unprotected, because we eliminate what will help them most to become strong: the small daily setbacks. The start of the school year is a magnificent moment to train resilience, especially when they haven't gotten the teacher they expected, or their best friend is in another class, or everyone says it will be a complicated year.

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Eva, my eldest daughter, got married before the summer and, if I were still writing The Worst Mother in the World, I would have liked to explain the impact and the emotion I felt seeing her take that step. I would confess that I cried like a baby. Perhaps soon it will be your turn to write The worst grandmother in the world.

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The afternoon is very hot in Washington DC, but that is not the reason why you do not see children or elderly people. The city is usually like this. As the seat of the federal government, Congress, and so many companies and institutions around it, the American capital is a magnet for recent graduates and young professionals who lower the city's average age and turn its landscape into almost that of a TV series. Retiring here is not the most common thing, but Carmen and Ralph Van Roy wouldn't change it for anything.

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Orelletes is a rabbit who is starting preschool (I3) and experiences it with the same intensity as many children who are entering a school for the first time. He cries, he doesn't like saying goodbye to his parents, he finds it hard to share toys, and he prefers to play alone, so he hides in a corner. With a lot of tact, the teacher helps him to breathe, to be calm, and he ends up joining the circle with the rest of the group. He is the protagonist of Orelletes at school, a story that aims to help experience this process from a kinder and more conscious space. Self-published by preschool teacher Meritxell Casanova, the story empathizes with the child and gives advice to parents to make these first weeks of schooling easier.

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Well, that's it. This week we are going back to school and even though, for the sake of appearances, teachers and students keep saying "how lazy we are and how little desire we have," the reality is that we are always excited (even if just a little bit) to start over. Starting a new school year is like falling in love again: new clothes, organizing plans, the desire to do it well. This year, yes.

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