Escuela Rural Activa (ERA)
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
The ERA (Active Rural School) project revitalises rural schools in order to connect them with their environment and community. The proposed activities integrate different social agents and work around the natural, cultural and material heritage to put it at the service of pedagogy with the aim of offering a public and quality education that takes place in the open air and dignifies rural lifestyles. To know in order to appreciate, to appreciate in order to preserve.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Which funds
Other Funds
We have received financial support from the EU by the Solidarity Cops program (2020/2021). Young people from the village has lead an initiative named Escuela Activa - Escuela Viva (Active School - Live School) and participate in the main project in different ways.
Description of the project
Summary
ERA (Rural Active School) is based on “learning communities” witch links children with the territory. It enhances the sense of belonging to the territory and feeling part of the community in order to dignify rural life and rise awareness in the social co-responsabilitiness of the natural and cultural heritage conservation. Keeping school alive and keeping it linked with its environment faces depopulation processes.
The activities integrate the neighborhood in the daily life of children education. That means people becoming references for kids in terms of heritage knowledge.
All those activities are comprehend into the following pillars:
- Create an organic and educative orchard where children, neighbours and families can meet and participate with a composter, teaching us the benefits of composting and sustainable organic waste management .
- Dynamization of interpretatives activities inside the “Sierra de Espadan” Natural Park. Learning to appreciate, appreciate to preserve.
- Help children connect with the material heritage of the Almonacid Castle and the Spanish Civil War Trenches.
- Being aware of the town’s cultural heritage as traditional jobs are.
Key objectives for sustainability
Lately, most of the public schools of the neighboring towns had been closed due to the lack of students and the population seems to assume that this will be the fate of Vall’s. However, the data is revealing: there are more than 15 children who are attending daily to a school in Segorbe. All of them are able to be enrolled in the municipal school. This fact shows the possibility of keeping the school alive and reach the following objectives in a sustainable way:
- Offer an innovative and experimental pedagogical proposal that estimates rural schools and their potential.
- Achieve a 70% increase of the school students in order to keep it alive.
- Involve families and the neighborhood in education so that traditional knowledge is transmitted and intergenerational relationships are strengthened.
- Present the project as a pilot experience able to be replicated in other rural schools.
One of the potentialities of the project is that it is capable of integrating the population while putting all the cultural and natural heritage at the service of education and community life.
As technicians we facilitate the meeting processes and coordinate the efforts of the different social agents with the aim of bringing them together.. All the communication channels had been created, we have a “motor group” in which all the associations of the town are represented, a group of “wise farmers” is the responsible for solving doubts related to the orchard and the vegetables growing.
Once the project has finished, all participation platforms, communication channels, and social relations between school teachers and population will remain. This is the main objective: make the project autonomous and sustainable over time.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
During its development, different graphic material has been created, such as the project logo, the roll up, advertising posters, leaflets and even interpretative material about the heritage that we have worked on with the children of the school. All this has allowed us to make ourselves known and disseminate the initiative.
During this time we have involved very different social agents and promoting synergies that have materialised in very interesting activities. With the collaboration of the school-workshop we have built greenhouses in the community garden, we have also made ceramic plaques with which each child has sponsored a tree in the area, learning about its peculiarities and recognising the importance of native species. We have also highlighted the value of traditional varieties of agricultural interest by organising an exchange fair in which more than 1000 seeds were distributed and exchanged, with the participation of around 100 people.
One of the most special initiatives has been the result of working hand in hand with the technicians of the Sierra de Espadán Natural Park, as well as with the Flora and Fauna Conservation Office: the breeding of different endangered animal species (triops, gallipatos and European crabs). An experience that symbolically reminds us of the situation of rural schools, which are also in danger of extinction. During the release days, in which both children and their families have participated, we have taken the opportunity to visit dry stone constructions of the municipality as well as different elements of natural interest.
All the activities we have carried out have been promoted through posters that have been disseminated both on social networks and in the surrounding villages. After each activity we have written articles that have been published by different media in the territory such as radio, newspapers and TV.At the end of the course we will create a report with all the graphic material and the activities carried out.
Key objectives for inclusion
Despite being a small village, Vall de Almonacid has a large number of social agents: Eco-cultural Association of Vall de Almonacid, Fuente del Lentisco Retired People's Association, Sierra de Espadan Natural Park, Association of Almonacid Castle Cultural Association, the AYR Agricultural Cooperative, etc.
The inclusion of so many social agents in the education project is has been a great advantage. Creating networks of social support or common work favours social cohesion and unify people around common objectives. By the moment they have participate in so many activities with the school:
- Olive harvesting in a local farmer's field and subsequent oil production at the AYR Cooperative.
- Participation in different musical activities organised by the town's music band.
- Guided visits to the castle of Vall de Almonacid with the Association of Friends of the Castle.
- The hatching of triops eggs, their care and the subsequent reintroduction of this endangered species in a pond in the municipality with the collaboration of the technicians of the Natural Park of the Sierra de Espadan.
- Intergenerational activities based on traditional games with the elderly at the family respite centre.
- Activities in the vegetable garden with the families of the school's pupils as well as with other neighbours.
As a technical team specialising in social intervention, we have taken on board all the proposals that have emerged from the people of the village themselves, as well as their hopes and their expressed needs.
It is essential that the people participate in the process and become the protagonists of the action in order to ensure the viability and sustainability of the project in the long term.
Results in relation to category
ERA is based on the pedagogical dynamization of the natural, material and cultural heritage of the municipality. One of its potentialities is that the technical team in charge of developing the project is external to the school, so that the workload involved in carrying out activities does not fall on the teachers.
The aim is to claim the quality of public and rural education through the implementation of an active, participatory and open-air pedagogy. The intention is to attract new families who are willing to settle in the village or who, living in nearby towns, decide to bring their children to the school in the municipality, attracted by this experiential pedagogy.
Currently, thanks to the promotion of this pedagogical model, four new students have been enrolled in the school, so that the main objective has been achieved: to avoid the closure of the village school.
In addition, through the activities, some of the curricular contents have been worked on and developed in greater depth, such as the economic sectors (from the countryside to the oil cooperative), the water cycle (visiting the spring, the water treatment plant and the water tank), trees (each child has sponsored a tree near the school), etc.
They have also worked on co-responsibility in the conservation of natural ecosystems through clean-up and reforestation days, as well as learning about the local fauna. In coordination with the Fauna and Flora Conservation Centre, the school participates in the experience of breeding an animal species in danger of extinction with the aim of reintroducing it into different ponds in the municipality, the "triops".
In this way, we see how the school intervenes transversally with the community and the territory. It is not possible to dynamise a school without first dynamising its environment.
How Citizens benefit
One of the main objectives of the ERA project is the involvement of the local population, which is why participation is encouraged throughout the process of creation and implementation of activities. During this time we have worked hand in hand with the neighbours, who on different occasions have recognised the life that the project has brought back to the village. Civil participation has been the key to success and to real intervention with great positive impacts both for the project and for the village in general.
Thanks to the initiative and the search for new pupils, two families have move to the village, two families who have embraced the rural way of life, thus mobilising the resources of the municipality. Different families have also been involved in the maintenance of the school garden, as well as a couple of elderly farmers from the municipality, who teach us experientially how to root tomatoes or how to deal with some of the pests in the area. All these dynamics have allowed people to increase their network of contacts and establish new relationships.
During the workshops and the pedagogical activities we have been able to learn about many different realities that have gone through the education of our children. We are happy that they have learned from the best experts, the local population itself: families, older adults, the school-workshop, the music band, the housewives, the castle association, individual neighbours, farmers, the cooperative, the town council, etc. have been involved.
Innovative character
The Active Rural School is an innovative proposal for experiential education rooted in the territory.
The school curriculum, in general, is not adapted to rural realities and does not take into account all the potential that these areas have to offer. ERA is committed to highlighting the value of this heritage so that it can be loved and preserved. The fact of offering rural references to children makes them dream of developing their personal projects in the territory and the dynamism that the project offers in the municipality encourages social cohesion and intergenerational relations.
One of the innovative potentialities of the project is that the technicians in charge of making it dynamic are external to the school, so that teachers do not have to carry more workload but can use the different activities to deepen the school curriculum.
ERA wants to value the rural school and the public and quality school. To recognise the specificities of each municipality in order to link schools to their social and natural environment. To put an end to the institutional hermeticism that characterises conventional schools in order to give way to an active school with doors open to social participation and willing to learn about social, natural, material and cultural heritage in an experiential way and from the hands of the greatest experts: the people who live in the territory.
An education that is individualised and connected to the rhythms of the land and the people in order to deepen the cultural traditions of the territory. Knowing in order to value, valuing in order to conserve. The ultimate goal is that many of the children who attend schools in the cities near the villages realise the advantages of an open-air school, which is not overcrowded and is aware of its role in the community.
