Nurturing talents for a better future

Basic information

Project Title

Full project title

Imagine Montessori School - The reference european green school with a solid interlinked curriculum.

Project Description

Imagine Montessori School is a reference eco-school internationally renowned for its ability to amalgamate its Montessori pedagogy from 1 to 18 years with its sustainability approach and entrepreneurship spirit as its dorsal spine.

We have transformed education from content-centred to child-centred education, fostering eagerness to learn.

Imagine is the first all-through school in Europe to achieve a double sustainability certification (Breeam Excellent and Green four leaves).

Project Region

Paterna, Spain

EU Programme or fund

Description of the project

Summary

According to the report by Schools for Health, the school building affects the health and performance of the student. By the time a student graduates from school, they will have spent more than 15,000 hours there, second only to the home in terms of time spent indoors.

With this in mind, we have created an environment in which the ideal conditions are created to benefit the students well-being while contributing to their cognitive, physiological, social and emotional development.

At Imagine Montessori School we believe that the purpose of a school is to spark the inner curiosity of a child, respecting their pace of learning and their individual abilities and interests. Allowing them to develop their creativity and explore their surroundings, they are able to discover that finding solutions to problems is extremely rewarding.

Imagine is the first all-through school in Europe to achieve a double sustainability certification (Breeam Excellent and Green four leaves). These guarantee that the design, construction and daily use of the building is carried out under the most demanding sustainability criteria, reducing energy consumption by 45% compared to a conventional building of similar use. It also recognises a 21% reduction in water consumption and a 47% reduction in CO2 emissions (equivalent to the annual CO2 absorption by a forest of 150 trees), improving the air quality and wellness of the building.

All the spaces in our schools have been designed as “prepared environments” that promote the learning and development of our students. The exterior and interior spaces are open plan. Every detail has been considered with an educational outlook while also ensuring the design is innovative and aesthetically pleasing.

Our sustainability model is embedded into our curriculum, incorporating different initiatives at each of our 3 stages (0-6, 6-12 and 12-18 years-old).

Our food philosophy is also aligned to sustainability as it uses organic, seasonal and 0km produce.

Key objectives for sustainability

Our sustainability model is structured in 3 pillars:

Building design principles
- Energy consumption: The design minimizes the use of energy throughout its useful life. To check the effectiveness of the enclosures, Blower Door tests have been carried out, which aim to detect unwanted air leaks.
- Selection of the materials: The building materials were chosen for their environmentally friendly qualities. We have avoided using materials such as steel and concrete as much as possible because of their high carbon footprint, instead we focused on:
  - Wood: All facade and roof coverings have been made with one of the most sustainable materials: wood.
  - Baked Clay: The main structure of the building has been made with load bearing brick walls and solid brick Catalan vaults, a simple local construction technique that reduces the building’s carbon footprint.
Operations design principles
- Energy generation and Green/Renewable energy: The energy consumed derives from the photovoltaic installation that partially supplies itself. The rest of the energy supplied comes 100% from renewable energies.
- Water consumption: The building has been designed to minimise water consumption, which is why it has been equipped with low-consumption plumbing installations. Additionally, any rainwater that falls on the roof or on the surrounding area is collected in a large buried container and then used to irrigate the garden areas.

Integration of sustainability approach into the educational program
- From the early years stage (0-6), children are introduced to the relevance of the natural environment.
- In the primary stage (6-12), children assume further responsibilities by leading awareness initiatives beyond the school limits such as cleaning public spaces (beaches, woods, dry river-beds…).
- In the secondary stage (12-18), these youngsters manage end-to-end productive processes as part of their “study and work pedagogical approach.

Key objectives for aesthetics and quality

Aesthetics
- Integration with the nature:
  - Design principles: A building born from a concept of authenticity; honouring the materials and processes used while respecting the location in which it has been built. Outside, the project is inspired by Nature: earth, air, water, light along with the many plants and animals.
  - Green roof: The roof of the school has been transformed into a beautiful green area that blends in with the landscape, providing a habitat for the local flora and fauna. The benefits of this include improving urban climate, reducing pollution, increasing water retention, noise reduction, energy saving, and extending the life of the building.
- Beauty of every space:
  - All the spaces in our schools have been designed as prepared environments that promote the learning and development of our students. The exterior and interior spaces are open plan.
Quality of experience: Indoor Wellness
- Air Quality and Thermal control:
  - Outside, we have achieved this thanks to a unique location that is surrounded by a spectacular pine forest.
  - Inside, excellent air quality is provided by monitoring and reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide and eliminating harmful compounds.
- Acoustic comfort
  - The use of vaults and sound-absorbing materials in classrooms has been studied to reduce ambient sound and control reverberation by accentuating it in the central area and decreasing it at the sides.
- Visual comfort
  - Natural light: we have made the most of the natural sunlight available. The large windows and interior patios in the classrooms allow light in, while offering excellent views.
  - Artificial light: The classrooms have been equipped with LED strip lighting with intensity and colour temperature control that is automatically regulated according to the circadian rhythms of nature. This will favour higher degrees of concentration and development amongst the children.

Key objectives for inclusion

As school we count on the support of our families’ community and extended community (collaborators, neighbors and followers) to materialise our inclusion model through these main streams:

Social inclusion: Promoting work for people at risk (risk of social exclusion, or people with disabilities).
- On Payroll: At Imagine we directly offer opportunities to disabled people or to people at risk of social exclusion. We have staff on payroll with these situations.
- Sub-contracting: When contracting services (gardening, kitchen...) we include a clause for the subcontractor to include this profile as a mandatory % of their workforce.
- Partner Associations: We also directly collaborate with a local association of people at risk of exclusion called “Asociación La Coma” with the majority of members of gipsy ethnia.
- Creating awareness of groups at risk.
Educational inclusion:
- Educational inclusion is a concept of pedagogy and considers that the school should include all individuals in the learning process, despite their condition, origin, race, religion or gender, etc.
- Diversity is a positive value within the school community. We understand our differences and despite our characteristics (physical, psychological, social and cultural) children have the right to receive a quality education.
- We contribute by creating a multicultural environment (+40 nationalities), and valuing diversity.
Diversity and inclusion:
- At school we value diversity as a lever to enrich our community culture, fostering gender equality and diversity and also valuing differences on religion, race, origin or sexual orientation.
- At Imagine we count with more than 40 nationalities among our community including our LGBT community, and our 2 main annual celebrations are “International Day” that is the result of a month's preparation of all families bringing their home countries culture and the “Family day” in all the different ways a family could be today.

Results in relation to category

On top of all impact indicators in our dashboard (CO2 production and compensation, energy and water consumption, etc), we have achieved several impacts on the media since we opened the school in Sep-2016 due to the innovative approach of our School. Top architect magazines as well as national and local newspapers wrote relevant articles. Here you have a selection of them:

How Citizens benefit

All parties involved during the conception of the School and currently are involved as follows:

Users:
- Involvement: Participation of all types of school users in the design phase (families, teachers, cooks, cleaning, administrative staff…)
- Impact: Every single area of the school was designed considering the daily operations.
Neighbourhood:
- Involvement: During the construction phase, as part of our sustainability certification process, we have contacted all neighbors in the area offering a contact person in case any concern/issue arises during that phase. We have also organised a meeting with all the neighbours willing to participate (+80) to explain the mobility plan associated with the new school operations.
- Impact: high satisfaction and onboarding of all parties, even when raising concerns, we showed them on how the traffic flow would flow (simulated analysis based on a drone flight video and extrapolating with new population in the area).
Education community:
- Involvement: As a pioneer education system, we collaborate with different universities and training centres.
- Impact: contributing to spread this methodology and way of understanding how sustainability, concept of beauty, hands-on learning and academic excellence can live together to take the most of the learning experience.

Architects and construction:
- Involvement: We also collaborate with the architectural and construction community in collaboration with the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia.
- Impact: to showcase how powerful the construction systems we are using are, to achieve sustainability impact combining easy to access technology and traditional building concepts.
Sustainability conscious community:
- Involvement: we continuously launch initiatives involving the extended community of the school, related to sustainability such as awareness initiatives.
- Impact: social awareness.

Innovative character

These are the main innovative levers we have used to redesign a traditional educational approach:

Redesign of educational model
- Teachers transformation: from teaching to coaching. Our teachers are qualified to teach in each of the stages and additionally certified in Montessori pedagogy. This certificate creates a metamorphosis in the teacher moving from teaching to coaching model, focusing from content-driven to child-needs-driven.
- Uninterrupted Work cycle vs subject time-slot: from 3 to 12 years, students dedicate 3 uninterrupted hours during the morning to work on their weekly plans. They manage their time initially (0 to 6 years-old) according to their interests and lately (6 to 12 years-old) according to their weekly objectives agreed with the teacher.
- Montessori Material: 100% of learning goals of children 0 to 6 years old are achievable through the manipulation of purposely-designed materials (designed by Dr. María Montessori) that the teacher will present in a strict sequence.
- Hands-on learning: With a solid foundation on neuroscience, manipulative materials and hands-on experimentation is demonstrated to be much more effective to learn than learning by observation or just listening or reading the content.
- “Study and Work”: While moving into the secondary, the introduction of work, leading an end-to-end process, generates responsibility and promotes autonomy and a whole understanding of a wider picture than simple pieces of a puzzle.
Redesign of educational spaces:
- Full-equipped: With the aim of providing a total independence, each classroom contains: a main room, kitchen, toilet, outdoor space.
- Dimension: providing around double the area of the traditional schools regulations.
- Outdoor connection: These classrooms are connected to outdoor environments with a free-flow policy.
First School in Europe with the double sustainability certificate: Breeam Excellent and Green 4 leaves.