The long strips of red-and-white seal sway in the wind at the entrance of the building. The mailboxes where the license plates are to be deposited for next year have been placed as a barricade so that no one can go beyond this point. On the other side the empty corridors begin, where the air hisses and caresses the stairs, prowls around the classrooms, passes between stacked chairs and tables. At the end of the gallery there are still hanging the colorful postcards of the last exhibition of the students, entitled Women in war.They are propaganda posters of the First World War, where the agenda was when March 8 approached, Women's Day and the last Sunday before everything was blown up. The iconography of some of the old plates has acquired a disturbing modern tone. One of them shows a nurse framed by a huge red cross under the word "HELP."
Next to the mural is the teachers' room and inside it four teachers chat in an animated way. One can sense in their energy the desire they have for life to return to the Cartima public institute, one of the youngest and most reputable in the province of Malaga, in the town of Cártama. In March, when 8.2 million non-university students were sent home overnight, they took little time to react here. "We had been preparing for a pandemic for six years and we did not know it," says José María Ruiz, the center's director and professor of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The institute was inaugurated in 2014 and thanks to the impulse of Ruiz and a team of passionate about teaching it has been recognized and awarded for its educational commitment without textbooks, based on projects and ultra-technological. Each of the 350 students has a tablet; to the few who do not have it, the center lends it; the teachers go everywhere with it and immediately, to show anything, they draw it; digital work and distance communication between teachers and students were already in common use before the coronavirus: for the exhibition of women in war, for example, the boys had prepared an audio guide that is activated by reading QR codes.
In April, when it became clear that going back to the classroom would be unfeasible, the faculty met by videoconference and decided to give the agenda a spin. They agreed that all subjects would revolve around the health crisis. In this way, in Biology the students studied genetics, but focusing on RNA and DNA, on mutations in viruses and zoonoses; in ICT they were asked to look for data and studies that they would have to explore with different applications; many of these reports were in English, which forced them to strive in this language; in History they traveled to the past through old pandemics, such as the Black Death in the 14th century and the misnamed Spanish flu in the early 20th century. The result is deep and mature work. From a phylogenetic tree of the coronavirus to try to explain “how it attacks, how it spreads and even how to stop it” to some careful historical documentaries with overwhelming vintage images, so similar to those of today.
I wanted the students to reflect on what we were experiencing
Emilio Maldonado, a teacher at the cartima institute, in Cártama (Málaga), commissioned his students to investigate old pandemics such as the 14th century black plague. | Photo: Sofía Moro
“I wanted the students to reflect on what we were experiencing,” says Emilio Maldonado, the History teacher. “The essence of education is to train children so that tomorrow they will be responsible people and contribute to improving society. And I think that after these months they will be more aware ”. In the words of Patricia Carrasco, the Biology teacher: “The students needed to speak, express themselves, question things. It did not make sense that we continue with contents disconnected from reality. The experiential is what you have. And their response has been extraordinary. They have been motivated by the situation ”.
Now is the September challenge. The president of the AMPA is walking through the courtyard of the institute this morning with a specialist in reforms, meter in hand. They value outdoor spaces for the coming year. The center intends that half of the students can be "out" each day; some in open classrooms, others on excursions that will be made daily in the area, which seems almost a return to the principles of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, which sought to "open" the walls of schools so that "no mere instruction and teaching, but full intellectual education ”, wrote Manuel B. Cossío, one of his thinkers. Aurora Carretero, Cartima's head of studies and English teacher, puts it in more prosaic terms: "We will have to look at the time every day."
This is perhaps the most critical point that all schools in Spain face: returning to class. According to the compulsory education teachers interviewed for this report, a tiny sample of the nearly 700,000 that exist throughout Spain, the instructions they have received from the Education ministries are confusing and inconclusive; the resources to fulfill them are scarce; The uncertainty principle reigns and each school and institute seems to face the new course in its own way and as best it can. Most are not very hopeful. "There are going to be infections for sure," says the director of Cartima. "I honestly think that we are going to be there for a week and they are going to confine us again," adds the History teacher.
The study Panorama of education in Spain after the covid-19 pandemic , coordinated by researcher Fernando Trujillo, from the University of Granada, puts figures on the concerns of teachers: 69% are concerned about their training for this new world; 67%, due to the lack of devices among students; 63%, due to the lack of personnel, and 60%, due to the absence of safety and hygiene measures. "The teachers have felt abandoned by the educational administration," the report denounces. And in that helplessness, he adds, the little "clarity" in the instructions influences. This summer's volatility, with flare-ups and phase reversals, adds even more confusion with a view to returning to the classroom.
Jorge Pozo Soriano, a 34-year-old primary school teacher at the Juan de Valdés concerted school in Madrid, says that he has disconnected from this point almost due to mental health, so as not to “get overwhelmed”, because the authorities affirm one thing “and after two days he will they change ”. He believes that everything will remain the same in September. “I will be with my 25 children of five and six years who have just arrived as a child, without having set foot in a school since March. Only me. With those 25 children, who ask you to go to the bathroom, some of them pee or cry because their parents are not there ”. In his opinion: “Ending the problem is something as simple and as complicated as providing more spaces and having more teachers. But in the end it seems that there is money for everything except education ”. Whether with or without a mask, and with more or less distance between children, this teacher sighs: "I only know that I have a summer ahead of me in which to relax from all the stress that this confinement has caused me."
I will be with my 25 children of five and six years who have just arrived as a child, without having been in a school since March
Jorge Pozo Soriano, a primary school teacher in Madrid, at home, from where he read books or juggled to capture the attention of children in online classes during confinement. | Photo: Sofía Moro
On March 10, the last day of class, Jorge Pozo improvised a farewell with his little ones: “I told them if we would see each other the next day, great. But maybe we didn't go back to school and we would have to wait ”. Almost 100 days later, with the course coming to an end, he sent each of them an emotional personalized farewell video. In between, everything has been invented to maintain contact and interest; He has also experienced a technological frenzy in which he spent the day hanging from his mobile, tablet and laptop. He has taken advantage of every corner of his house to record a wide variety of homemade clips: magic tricks, the challenge of flour, reading books, origami ... One of them, in which he invites students to juggle toilet paper rolls, it perfectly sums up the strange, cloistered and sometimes suffocating reality that we have all experienced. "What worried me about confinement was that the theory could be given in some form, but the emotional was going to be missing," Pozo explains. "It was about telling them: 'Everything will be fine, I'm by your side and if you need something you can ask." Often, he adds, he has also had to act as a "psychologist" for the parents, who are equally distraught and lost. “We have assumed that everything was going to be very simple, that teachers and families had the resources and the tools. And it was not so. We have adapted as best we could, based on a lot of work ”. He believes that the educational authorities were wrong in making the decision to evaluate and mark the last section of a course under the state of alarm. “This whole emotional part fell apart a bit. The teachers were much more stressed, and also the families because it forced them to follow deadlines, to make up assignments, to send them on time, to be aware of the children because, at least mine, are too young to be autonomous when 100% ”.
There is a part of the future that terrifies him and it has to do with those “operating room” images that began to arrive of European children returning to class and playing at recess in separate squares. “I don't understand distance education, the fact that you can't interact with a child, hug him if he asks you to, give him a hand if he's crying on an excursion. They don't just go to school to study content. They will learn to live, to grow and develop, to relate to each other, to have conflicts and to resolve them. How are children not going to touch? How can they not be able to play in a yard together? They are talking about banning the balls and that we are going to take them to the patio so that they can be outdoors for a while without touching, practically without talking, without mixing with groups other than their own. At least the essence of elementary school is going to be lost, which is just that: contact with others and growing together ”.
Belén Muñoz, a 59-year-old veteran teacher who today directs the Pío XII public school in Madrid, recently woke up with tachycardia due to a nightmare. September was coming, the new school year started, and on the first day of class, 370 families were crowding at the school door. In her anguished dream, she had not had time to notify the new entry times or the change in access. "My God!" She exclaimed overcome. “And they are all here already! What I do? I call the Police? Do I let you in? "
The nightmare is understandable. Muñoz has spent weeks preparing the solid building from the beginning of Francoism located in the Tetuán neighborhood. There are arrows with directions on the ground; Signs stating “wait your turn here” and “keep your distance”. In the classrooms, desks have been removed so that there are no more than 20 students and in some of them, on the teacher's table, transparent screens have been placed to protect teachers considered "at risk" from contagion. The cabinets and shelves, overflowing with shared material, have been turned over and face the wall, so that the children do not pick up or handle anything. To reduce the capacity of each class, a “mixed group” has been drawn from their sleeve, taking students from each of the four lines. These will be housed in transformed rooms: The music room? Converted. The compensatory one? Converted. Library? Converted.
If I close my eyes, this course is… covid. What happened before March 10 is erased. It was so intense!
Belén Muñoz, a teacher at the Pío XII public school in Madrid, talks about the digital divide that has exposed the confinement. | Photo: Sofía Moro
Muñoz walks through the half-light center, overflowing with vitality and opening doors and lifting blinds. The window of one of the classrooms opens onto the patio, and down there you can see a dozen kids from the urban camp. Only one wears the mask correctly. The principal snorts. She says that she has already seen “neeeeegras” masks and knows that when the course begins it will be difficult. "But I can't do a break for each course either." It has been tough weeks of reorganization. The principal shows off her bruised and injured legs from hauling furniture around, the culmination of an extreme school year. “If I close my eyes, this course is… covid. What happened before March 10 is erased. It was so intense! "
Pius XII, explains Muñoz, is a "difficult performance" center, which means that it is home to low-income families, many of them from ethnic minorities and of foreign origin. “The digital divide has been noticed, the absolute lack of resources and the added effort that many parents have had to make to help their children when even they did not reach the knowledge,” he asserts. The teachers tried to get homework done by any means: from email to hand-delivery of homework that they printed at home, with their own printer, and prior notice to the police to guarantee safe conduct during confinement. Meanwhile, the families called on Muñoz's phone with pressing reasons: "They told me in a great hurry that they needed food." In this school, more than 200 children have a lunch grant, which is sometimes the only decent meal of the day. They got food cards, restaurant donations. “The school became a comprehensive care for families. Without eating, you don't do your homework, that's clear ”.
With a view to the coming year, Muñoz is straining the budget. “A fortune” has been left in pedal trash cans. He has bought 20 tablets, maybe he will get more. It has also planned "many more hours of computing in all courses" and that some subjects are taught digitally "so that, if this happens again, students are used to it." It demands "urgent technological resources", and also human ones. And he concludes with a self-criticism about the technological gap between teachers, which also exists: "We should have taken our training more seriously."
The educational system, like the rest of society, was not prepared for a crisis of this magnitude. The situation has somehow made the deficiencies more palpable. According to Miriam Leirós, a 43-year-old Galician teacher from the Antonio Palacios de O Porriño public school (Pontevedra), the confinement destroyed “the equalizing function of the school”, which implies that within the classroom everyone has “the same rights and the same possibilities". From one day to the next, each child was trapped "in their reality, however cruel it was." The only thing that reached everyone was WhatsApp, says Leirós, so she had to skip the protocols (which limit contact to email and official teaching platforms) to be able to communicate with each child via mobile. The pandemic also evidenced different attitudes among teachers. Some committed, in their opinion, "almost a neglect of functions" limiting themselves to sending files or a book in PDF, which does not contribute much when these days anyone can download content from the Internet. “And then there has been another part that has done the possible and the impossible. Working more hours than ever, without looking at the clock, and putting a lot of resources on his part ”.
It seems absurd to return in September and start with the subject, verb and predicate as if nothing had happened
Miriam Leirós, teacher at the Antonio Palacios de o Porriño public school (Pontevedra). | Photo: Sofía Moro
As has happened with the majority of jobs that have teleworked during the pandemic, teachers speak of days that have been extended until they fill almost every slot of the day. The boundaries between work and the rest of life were blurred. Those who had children barely combined both tasks. Many had to learn technology at full throttle. To upload a job, to scan documents, to generate a Power Point file, to send audios, edit videos, to correct exams directly on a screen (and without a red pen).
Leirós tried to go beyond the mere academic curriculum and, for example, commissioned his students to build a “time capsule”, for which he asked them to reflect and put into words what they were feeling. The task forced them to write correctly, but what was relevant was for them to name their emotions and think about the world around them, and it will become especially instructive when they open it next year. "Teachers have a very important social function and I felt the responsibility to fulfill it", argues Leirós. He was angered by the debate about reopening the classrooms before the end of the year because it seemed that the only thing that was valued was that the teachers take care of the children so that the parents could return to their jobs. "It offends me and a large part of my union," he protests. "We are not guardaniños."
These days, while the public discussion revolves around logistical issues, such as bubble groups and the size of the classrooms, Leirós is already working on the contents of the next course. "It seems absurd to me to return in September after so many confined months and start with the subject, verb and predicate or the least common multiple as if nothing had happened," he says. “I think it is essential to explain to children why their lives have been interrupted. What is a zoonosis? Why has a virus jumped on people? Why has there been this loss of biodiversity? Let's get to the heart of the matter ”. Leirós, coordinator of the environmental platform Teachers for Future, is concerned that we have not learned the lesson, that we miss the opportunity and in the end, in September, "we will continue to do the same."
Many think that there will be no change. "I think the new normal is going to be the same, but with hydroalcoholic gel and masks," says for example Professor Jesús Manzano, 41 years old. This teacher teaches Economics and Business at an institute in Alba de Tormes, Salamanca, Macroeconomics at the University of Salamanca and Entrepreneurship in a cycle of Vehicle Electromechanics. Of all his students, he believes that those in Vocational Training "are the ones who have suffered the most." Learning in his case cannot be conceived without attending a workshop or without the face-to-face practices with which the course ends. In Manzano's words: "You don't fix it with YouTube." His university classes, on the other hand, have been satisfactory. Perceived motivation above normal. Their online lessons were more followed than the face-to-face ones, with about 100 students on the other end, and the youngsters returned creative and elaborate work. For one of them, for example, he asked them to imagine the macroeconomic scenarios after the pandemic, from the debacle to a great reconstruction pact, and they gave him novels, short films and a magazine titled The Young Economist.
Vocational training students are those who have suffered the most
Jesús Manzano, professor at various centers in Salamanca. | Photo: Sofía Moro
Manzano defines these months of multitasking teacher with an expression: “perpetual imagination”. He adds: “We have given everything we had. We have had to continually invent strategies so that they take care of us, so that they can do the exercises, research work of all kinds, so that there is diversity, so that they do not get bored, so that it is not too hard ”. He has tried to apply new educational methodologies, "such as design thinking ", which prioritize self-learning and promote teamwork at a distance. With high school students, I was aware of how tedious it can be for a caged teenager to follow 60-minute master classes, one after another. He was concerned about attending to the diversity, the different rhythms, not losing sight of what is immediately noticeable in person, but is diluted on the other side of the screen. "We were not prepared," he confesses. “There was a lack of training for students and teachers. There were platforms and we all handled some of them at a basic user level. But not enough to implement a 100% online education ”. From students, he says, this confined world has demanded “self-discipline, responsibility, autonomy, proactivity; a set of qualities that at their age it is still very difficult for them to develop. It was a reality check. They lived in a rosy world and are getting older by force ”.
Especially those who faced the toughest academic test of their life. As she walks through the sober corridors and the concrete and wood classrooms of the Estudio school, the cell phone of teacher Blanca Ríos, 49, fumes with messages from second year high school students. Today is July 16 and in a few hours the results of the EvAU are scheduled to be made public. The students, Ríos says, have ended up exhausted. "It has been a very long course in which we have had to adapt to schedules, dates, calendars, to new teaching systems." They are a marked generation who will not forget what they experienced easily. “They have suffered a lot. For those 15, 17 or 18 years old, you have taken away the good part of school, which is social, being among them, spring or even dealing with the teacher and all that is good about this. You have also taken away from them playing basketball or soccer. And you have left them only the academic one, which is the hardest. And also with all that uncertainty ”.
In this private Madrid center there are about 2,000 students and 140 teachers, in addition to the logistics of extracurricular classes, routes and dining room. "We have suffered a revolution," according to Ríos. She looks back and sees herself in March, after the first and uncertain bars of confinement, in a meeting of teachers in the library where a classmate taught her to use Google Classroom and upload assignments. "We had absolutely no idea and the next day we were up and running." He recalls the "tremendous shame" that was generated in the beginning by recording himself on video and the fear of giving an online class in case someone recorded it, disrupted the content and made it viral. She also remembers at home, with her four children and her husband also working, searching with the laptop for the corner where the connection did not freeze. Her voice breaks when she mentions perhaps the most tragic moment, the death of one of the teachers at the center due to the covid: “It was a blow to everyone. The boys also realized that he was a young and healthy person, that this affected us much more closely than we had thought ”.
It has been a very long course in which we have had to adapt to schedules, dates, calendars, to new teaching systems
Blanca Ríos, a teacher at the Estudio school in Madrid, tells how difficult it was to prepare older students for the EvAU tests. | Photo: Sofía Moro
Months later, with Spain in the de-escalation process and before the grand exam, the school offered students the possibility of voluntarily attending class for a preparatory course for the EvAU. A few came, all sat widely spaced in the classroom and the center took the opportunity to rehearse what may be the future of education. In the class, a camera was placed that recorded the teacher's movements and voice; she, in turn, could see the pupils' faces from a distance through a computer screen. In this way, one part followed the explanation in person and the other from home, through the Internet. They had to make adjustments because at first it did not sound well and the chalk was barely read; And the preparation course, in any case, ended quickly, leaving enough days of isolation at home ahead: no student wanted to risk being quarantined just before such an important exam. But she left a sample of what may be to come. "We have to practice it," says Ríos. "It could be a solution with a view to September, if that is what we have to do, because we are not sure what the future will be either."
In any case, Ríos is concerned about a world without face-to-face classes, a school without children. “You lose a lot. Despite having the means and having worked and having been examined; although some have tried very hard and focused even more, they have generally learned less. The school is not only content. It is so much more. It is an institution where families, students, teachers interact. It is a life, a world. And the academic part is a smaller percentage ”. After the interview with the teacher, on the way out of the building, we passed between corridors and stairs divided by a yellow line placed so that the students respect a certain sense and do not crowd each other when they return. There are also fragments of that life that beat at school until March: dozens of hand-made notebooks, folders with drawings, paper bags with works inside that no one has come to collect yet. Outside, in the courtyard, a group of children from a camp are scampering. They are small and so many months later their vision is strange; they act naturally and innocently, jump and laugh carelessly.