MY IDEAL SCHOOL -Marta

Here is the project of my ideal school.

First lets start talking about its location.

My school will be located in the outskirts of the city. The reason why it will be located there is because children will be set apart from dialy dangers with which we live everyday such as crossing a zebra cross or avoiding the possibility of children being runed over by a car while they are running behind the ball that has escaped while playing.

This remote location has key problems which are the following: not every family is able of carrying their children to school so far because of three things: they don’t have time to expend travelling to the outskirts, their job don’t allow them to do it or because they don’t have particular or public transport for arriving to school.

For this reason we have two proposals or solutions:

The first one is to put a bus school to do a route and pick up the children from their homes or organise parents by days or weeks so one of them is in charge taking kids to school. With this second way parents are taking part in the school environment, which is one of our objectives, but we will explain it later.

The next step is present the structure and the timetable of the ideal school.

Our school consists on three floors:

In the first floor we will have the principal entrance and the parking but the entrance of the parking will be removed of the front door for avoiding dangers.

After entering, we have 2 sets of stairs near the door, each of them at each side. In front but far we have the same structure: stairs and between them and entrance/ exit to the playground.

At the left we have the concierge, the medicine gabinet, the library, the toilets and the canteen.

At right, near the stairs we have another toilets, head of studies and headmaster offices and finally the theater, which is provided with audiovisual material.

In the second floor we will have the classes and also a set of toilets. This school doesn’t want crowded clases, so with few students teaching and learning is easier and more effective.  The organisation of the class will be U shaped or in circle desks for children sitting in groups. They will have to share some mataerial ocassionally and help each other as tehir are organised in groups. This develops values like sharing and helping, teamwork and cooperation.

In the third floor, apart from that we will have the technology room, provided with computers and tools for children to familiarize with new technologies, a laboratory for students to start experiencing with life and the environment and the music room.

Classes will have big Windows for natural light passing through them. The decoration will be made with brightly eye-catching colours to create a good environment and transmit good feelings between the people in the school.

The school will have also a wide playground with many parkland. In the playground there will also be the gym and the changing room for children to change before and after exercising.

In a separate area of the school we will have facilities for extracurricular activities such as football, basket and tennis court and indoor swimmingpool. Apart from this we have to remember that we also had the theater and the gym, were dance and judo could be done.

Locating these infrastuctures near the school will facilitate parents and children to arrive to the extracurricular activities.

Now, I am going to talk about the timetable.

	MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY
8:30-9:20
9:25-10:15
10:15-10:35	BREAK	BREAK	BREAK	BREAK	BREAK
10:35-11:20
11:25-12:15
12:15-12:35	BREAK	BREAK	BREAK	BREAK	BREAK
12:35-13:25
13:30-14:20
14:20-15:30	LUNCH	LUNCH	LUNCH	LUNCH	LUNCH
15:30-16:30	BREAK	BREAK	BREAK	BREAK	BREAK
17:00- 18:00	EXTRA	EXTRA	EXTRA	EXTRA	EXTRA

*EXTRA: extracurricular activities which will be carried out after the period of lessons and lunch time.

Lessons lasts 50 minutes as we consider children mind can not take much time paying attention.

Then, we have stablished two breaks because as children are very nervous and as it is to understand, they crave fun outdoors with their peers.

When the lessons period ends they will have lunch and another hour of break. After this, every children should attend extracurricular activities. Apart from sportive activities children will have the possibility of making traditinal tasks such as carpentry, gardening, cooking, sewing, etc. In this way we are developing multiple abilities in other environment.

Once explained the location and structure of the center we will move to the education field.

First, I want to mention the desire of parents taking part in the school. For this, we will create a Parent’s Association were aspects of the school will be treated. In addition to this, as I have mentioned at the very begining, parents could also help organising between them in groups for bringing children to school.

Now, I am goingto talk about the main points that my ideal school supports to deal with children education:

1.      Project based eduaction: As we are trying to improve we have to leave old methodologies behind so in this school children will use books just as a guide. The new way of learning will be that of cooperative learning in which they will work in different units making a final project but they will have to search for information on their own or in groups.

2.      Children won’t have to face exams. The new way of evaluating wil be progressive and made by teachers, partners and the student itself. In this way, children will receive feedback from teachers and peers and thay will take into account for the next Project. At the end of the year the child will be able of noticing her/his improvement along the course.

Some people argue that this is a slow method of learning and that children learn less than with the traditional way. May be it is a slow process and that they don’t study many contents but the ones that they learn they will make in a more specific and deep way, as they can focus their projects in the direction they like or interst more.

3.       For making learning more cooperative and concern children of their mates likes the school propose a project which will last almost all the year.

This Project has the aim of make children know each other. Each week a student will say what they like most (favourite animal, fils, sport) and her/his mates will have to do something (a drawing, song, crafts) related to what the student have said. In this way they are going to be aware of the importance of making people feel happy and also interest in each other.

This point follows the aim of introducing parents in the school. Carrying out this activity at home children will ask hepl to parents and they will be taking part on the Project, strengthening the relation children-parents.

Besides, we want to create an organization were teachers, students and parents talk about necessities, complaints, new ideas, problems at school or at home. All of these to have a closer relation between all of the members which make posible the school.

4.      Talking about methodologies, it will be based on constructivism to leave children learn by its own where the teacher acts as a guide because for learning we have to fail, to create doubts from our research and search more for solving them, etc. The position of the teacher will be that of support and guide, helping  and motivating students to finish, reach and learn from the works they do.

5.      Teachers formation: the educational center will not improve if teachers do not evolve individually and collectively. Although teachers perform part of their work individually, if the center aims to evolve as a whole should be many opportunities for faculty development in which teachers learn together. My ideal school supports the idea of value every 2 years (more or less) if they are using actual or update methodologies and material. This can be one of the biggest problems we have in education now. Many teachers are very old and they are linked to traditional ways, which slows and stagnates children learning.

6.      In my ideal school every children will wear uniform for promoting equality and avoid prejudice and any possibility of discrimmination.  In this way children will learn that everyone is equal and also they will be forced to develop at the maximun their personal identity, their personality to be known.

The ideas I will take from my partners projects is that of make children concern about the environment and the other of implant animals in the class to create that feeling of responsability on them since tehy are Young. This concern children about the world in general. I will promote reciclying activities, excursions to forests contact with nature as a whole (plants, animals, natural sources).

In conclusión, creating this ideal school is not imposible but it is very difficult currently because now there still existing difficulties, as many schools are built with the  traditional disign, teachers are old, which is the biggest hándicap as I have mentioned before as it slows learning and sometimes this leads children to abandone school. Apart from this, education policy doesn’t help education improvement as it is very tied to fulfill the curriculum without being concern about the diversity of children we can have in the class with many differences between them as could be development level, abilities, difficulties with the language (in the case of immigrant students) or other characteristics such as down students, gifted children, etc. What is more, many of these ideas entails a great investment that perhaps the public school and some families can not afford.

School Improvement is formed with a systematic and continuous effort to change the learning conditions and other internal conditions associated in one or more schools, with the ultimate aim of achieving the educational goals more effectively so we have to keep going and never fail.