28 Feb St. Paul’s School Barcelona: Critical Friends Programme
How can we work with our students and teachers in order to create a culture of collaboration and to transform our school into a place of deeper learning?
How can we improve our teaching and learning?
These are two of the main objectives at St Paul´s School, Barcelona which we strive to achieve through continuous development and assessment of our teaching and learning methods and through project based learning introduced in each of the curricular areas.
We need to teach our students how to learn, engage, expand their capabilities, approach new subjects, learn from mistakes and manage emotions.
Our teachers should work as a team, learn from others, stimulate engagement, inspire curiosity to learn and nurture innovation and creativity.
Learning strategies should include a host of approaches to a self-managed and deeper learning. The students should be inspired to manage their own learning, think, question and set and pursue their own goals. Eduardo Briceño states in Mindsets and Students Agency, Unboxed, 2013.
During the week of 10th – 14th of February, we were accompanied by two of the directors from High Tech High, Graduate School of Education, California, USA http://gse.hightechhigh.org/ for the launch of the St. Paul’s School Critical Friends Programme.
Laura McBain and Azul Terronez, founder members of this reputable programme, in which a group of 10 of our St. Paul’s School teachers are participating, came to take a look at how we work, to observe our methodology and to set the ball rolling.
Each teacher is paired with a critical friend from High Tech High who supports them in their on-going research and who serves as a collaborator and consultant throughout the year via email, video conferencing and face-to-face conversations.
Our objective is to learn about innovative practices, discuss how to improve our own practice and explore and share collaborative, student-centered, project based learning experiences that will help us to lead the way in creating innovative and engaging learning environments.
Patricia Carranza
Headteacher
