He CEIP Padre Coloma It is one of the references in the Community of Madrid as a center of educational excellence in which the focus is placed on the promotion of the talent and effort of students with an important collaborative work of parents and teachers. This school, which collaborates in the initiatives of the Ministry of Education and the City Council of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, is managed by Carmen Pascual González- Babé He has been kind enough to answer a generous questionnaire and has shared his experience with the readers of Peques and Más.
Carmen, mother of 3 children, is a teacher specializing in early childhood education and has a Degree in elementary education in addition to 29 years of experience as a teaching officer. She is the author and director of several training courses for teachers of Infant, Primary, ESO and Baccalaureate Education. He has been a speaker at different forums for education professionals, Management Teams, Teaching Degree in private schools and Seminars at the Autonomous University of Madrid. She is president of opposition courts in the Autonomous Community of Madrid and has several publications in specialized magazines. Father Coloma is a center of Infant and Primary Education that covers from 3 to 12 years old, with bilingual, Spanish and English teaching, with native conversation aides. I leave you with the interview with Carmen:
What are the main reasons for the success of Colegio Padre Coloma?
The PISA report measures the results of 15-year-old students and in CEIP Padre Coloma, we have students from 3 to 12 years old, which are the stages of early childhood and primary education. In the results of the CDI tests (essential knowledge and skills), which is an external evaluation carried out by the Community of Madrid in 6th grade, our success lies in the work. Our objective is teach to our students necessary for strengthen the essential.
Who composes the tribe in CEIP Padre Coloma to achieve success?
In our school, the priority is the teaching staff. Previously, I spent a few years dedicating myself to union tasks because I wanted to know about education from that prism. It seemed to me that the teachers were not well treated, our work was not sufficiently recognized by Spanish society and perhaps it was that stage that marked my interest. In honor of the truth, few other things could I say about those few years.
They are therefore the teachers of the school with their effort and commitment "the chiefs of the tribe." Naturally, we have a lot of support from non-teaching staff who feel the same need for us to "empty out" with our students, with very unfavorable socioeconomic conditions. They are the raw material in which we turn our desires and which in turn transmit to their families.
When did you decide to focus on excellence?
Before excellence, we considered transmitting to the teachers that we had closer and to which they were adding course after course, the effort to reach the common goal of reaching educational excellence. We speak not only of the curriculum itself, but of excellence as people. The values of generosity, truth, responsibility, joy, orderly work, caring external care, which make up the human tone, preside every minute of those in contact with our children and their families.
Our goal is to teach our students the necessary to strengthen the essential
What are the pillars that support the excellence model?
The job well done and the love we put into doing it with the effort that entails. We prepare our classes very well because at school we have suppressed textbooks in order to carefully choose the content we transmit to our students and prioritize disciplines that, in our opinion, are fundamental and do not appear in the manuals. I speak of reaching a good oral, written expression, understanding any type of text well, which will help them to understand problems and prioritize mental calculation at the same time that we try to train the much disliked memory.
How do you track and continuously improve the model?
Through the observation of achievements, to detect deficiencies and change course if necessary. We maintain between the teaching staff and the management team a vertical coordination through the departments in the subjects of language and mathematics, which is unusual in preschool and primary education in the public school. We are a single-line school and horizontal coordination takes place in each cycle.
Who helped you make the change in the model and why?
The results of previous external evaluations in which the school was well below the average of the Community and those that had to go around helped us in the change, taking as a model the materials that the Community of Madrid puts at the service of the teachers that are the Academic Performance Improvement Plans for which we receive periodic advice in addition to having completed a training course for both the head of studies and myself.
At school we have suppressed textbooks and children use the theory notebook and the exercise book
What are the tools used in the school?
For each subject the children use two notebooks: the one we call important book which is the one that will contain the theory that will be transmitted, either by copying the contents of the Interactive Whiteboard (in the lower courses, which have more difficulties to "take notes") or to the dictation in the upper courses and the workbook. In 1st grade, where they still have difficulty reading and writing with some fluency, they use a single notebook for each subject that contains both curricular content and exercises.
We have common rules for the presentation of notebooks for all elementary courses that are carefully cared for and remembered with decorative posters located in each classroom. The material is exactly the same for each class because we have established a system of "cooperatives" through which, each family puts a stipulated amount of money at the beginning of the course (round 30 euros or 40 euros per quarter) and is the tutor teacher who is responsible for the acquisition of the same, giving good account to the holders of that cooperative that are two parents. It is a good way to alleviate the battered economy of our families because textbooks are very expensive and in our opinion, they do not cover the needs we consider essential to achieve competent students.
In short, we combine the most traditional methodology, which is the classic notebook, with the IDPs that is a state-of-the-art tool. Every day and in all the courses of both early childhood and primary education are done in the subject of mathematics, ten minutes of mental calculation that is recorded in some booklets that we have designed for each student in the school and, in the language classes , they also spend a few minutes on what we call spelling which is to spell words, appropriate to each level, and guess it. In this session we work on mental agility, vocabulary and spelling.
How does the teacher create an environment of excellence in the classroom?
With work and affection in a cozy, clean and with a careful decoration in its smallest details. The values that I have indicated above are constantly insisted. Being the model of our students is hard work because we cannot lower our guard at any time. Our example is key.
Being the model and example of our students is hard work and we can't let our guard down
How are you taking advantage of technology in the classroom, what tools do you have and what do you use it for?
We have in each classroom a POI that is very useful for us. In it we focus on the issues we prepare and go to web addresses for the most graphic explanations. At the same time, the Community of Madrid has trusted our school by sending us an endowment of 30 tablets and has provided us with a program for learning online mathematics called Smartick that students do every day at the school and on weekends and holidays at home.
The teaching staff controls from their personal accounts the achievements, the timely entry of students from their homes and the level at which each is. At the end of each subject of the instrumental subjects, the tutors and specialist teachers send to each family what has been taught in class so that they are promptly informed of the contents they should know and thus be able to review them with them. Another consequence of the deletion of the textbook is that families must know in some way what their children do in school and teachers indicate it with a job in which they have carefully selected what children should learn .
How many nationalities exist in the school among students and teachers?
The 17 teachers are Spanish and we also have a full-time conversation assistant of US nationality. The students, 240, belong to 27 countries on all continents.
How do you get the family atmosphere and alignment in excellence?
In the CEIP Padre Coloma, the Tutorial Action Plan is given a major importance, which has been prepared at the request of the management team and with the unanimous approval of the cloister. It is a well-taken document that helps families and school go in the same direction. The management team knows each and every one of our students' families with whom they have regular meetings and each tutor meets at least twice a year with each one. They participate in school parties and both parents and children are taught that behind the uniform they wear is the school. The sense of belonging they carry with great pride.
The management team knows each and every one of our students' families by holding regular meetings and parties
How do you follow up the students of the school who go to secondary school?
All our students go to the same Institute. From the first years of primary education, we insist that the attention and affection given to them in school is more difficult to do in the Institute, and that therefore they must be very close and protect each other. We are in contact with the IES management team and alumni constantly come to visit us. We give directions to each of the issues that are discussed.
We would not allow the work that has cost us to form their heads and their hearts, to be taken by the first bad company that appears in their lives. By some we know of others and we even call their families or they ask us for help once they have ceased to be our students but not our children.
How do children respond to the applied learning method and if they all do it in the same way?
They respond according to their maturation level and interest. We try to put them to the limit of their capacity. We are proud of not having outstanding discipline problems and exemplary integration. More than exemplary, integration flows in the most natural way.
How do the School and the Parents' Associations respond to the introduction of this methodology by the teachers?
At first they were reluctant that their children did not have books because as usual, what is paid dearly is valued more. Seeing day by day the presentation, the letter and the cleaning of the notebooks of their children, the knowledge that they are acquiring, just but essential, the contents that we send them by email (which facilitates their work so as not to get lost in the "jungle" "from sections of textbooks), how they are handled orally and the media impact that our way of working is having, they are delighted.
How do the kids work at home what they learned in the classroom?
Through the agendas designed in the school, the tasks are indicated. In addition, the topics that are being taught to families by email are sent. And on the weekends we have a system for lending books from the classroom library with some files that must be filled in and that have been prepared in a friendly way and different from the old cards used, by the teachers of the school.
What is the profile of the professors of the College and what is the method of selection that you apply for hiring?
It is a public center, so that teachers do not choose. It is accessed by competition-opposition and the school is chosen based on vacancies and points that are taken because of years worked and merits. By this I mean that public education teachers are the best among the best because the opposition is a tough exam in which deep general content is currently required in an initial exam that is eliminatory.
The number of places offered is very small. To get an idea, in the past competitions in the Community of Madrid only 25 primary education places were offered. Those 25 approved, there is no doubt that they are the best. In our school the average does not reach 35 years.
What training contents are taught among teachers to ensure that the method is applied in the best possible way?
We have advice from the Community of Madrid and every year we organize working groups supervised by the corresponding Teacher Training Center. In addition, each teacher continues their training as appropriate, depending on their needs and if family charges allow, outside of school hours.
How can parents contribute to promoting children's learning at home?
With rules and assignments scheduled in tutorials with teachers.
When you attend meetings with other schools in the Community of Madrid, in other provinces of Spain or outside of Spain, what lessons and experiences are shared?
Things are learned from each school and from my fellow teachers from so many places, too. I suppose that enrichment is mutual and there will be experiences that are likely to take advantage and others not, depending on the peculiarities of each school. In any case, we can move through a transfer contest to other centers where many of those that would not work in the previous one do fit.
And here the interview with Carmen Pascual González-Babé. I thank Carmen for her generous collaboration with Peques and Más for explaining what are the keys to the educational model of the CEIP Padre Coloma. I congratulate you on your work and of course I hope that your system based on effort, work, trust and respect has a long history. I am convinced that your students will recognize the work of the school throughout high school, high school and insurance that will last throughout their lives.
