With more than 12 years of experience in the design and implementation of policies related to education, Teresa Patronelli She currently serves as General Director of School Open to the Communityfrom where it promotes initiatives focused on reading, equity, families and community participation.
Patronelli, a lawyer by training, leads an area that focuses on “designing, implementing and evaluating pedagogical guidelines that prioritize equal access to education and culture”; in addition to “providing support and guidance to educational units in the psychosocio-educational field” and in the work in cooperatives and family inclusion in education; among other topics that make a school open to the community.
This week, Patronelli participated in a new episode of Ticmas podcast.
Anxiety and education
The fact that 70% of adolescents who go to secondary school have stated at some point that they have symptoms of anxiety or loneliness or even depressionwas one of the impulses that led this education management in the City to make strategic decisions.
“In schools, this data can be seen with a lack of concentration, some feelings that manifest themselves with anxiety in the children. Of course, it also affects academic performance and learning. For these reasons and other reasons, we include Socio-emotional well-being as a priority and strategic axis within the Buenos Aires Learn Planwhich is our government plan at the Ministry of Education,” Patronelli explained.
And he added that This approach was innovative of this management since it had not previously been considered to consider the importance of the socio-emotional well-being of the children and its impact on learning.
Wellbeing and education
“Social-emotional well-being is worked on at 360º. It works directly with actions for studentsbut also with actions for the teachers “They are the ones in charge of the kids every day and they are the ones who first detect what to intervene or prevent in the classroom,” Patronelli highlighted.
And he added the key role of families “because we believe that the alliance is with them, with whom we have to be on the same starting line and have the same tools to be able to act and accompany the children and strengthen them above all things.”
In this accompaniment, Patronelli highlighted that “The extended day is one of the twelve priority policies of the Buenos Aires Learn planand its main objective is to extend school time in those schools that are single-day schools.
He explained: “The day is assimilated to a double shift up to three times a week and what is sought at that time is that they be educational spaces fundamentally focused on the fact that in all schools there is more language and mathematics because that is our main objective, that the children learn and those are the learnings that we call foundational.”
He also highlighted that “there is a lot of other content in these educational spaces that has to do with recreational and recreational activities: they have chess, science, investigation, education in motionthey also have workshops socio-emotional well-being because it is not just more time in school, it is time with a pedagogical sense and with a focus on the socio-emotional and in that way you can see an impact or a result in achievements. “In the last evaluations we had in the city, all the extended day schools improved in both mathematics and language.”
Find a balance
In addition to foundational knowledge, the General Directorate of Open School works with fifteen programs which, as Patronelli explained, “are outside the mandatory curriculum and what they are looking for is enhance school trajectoriesgenerate opportunities, generate conditions of equity, above all they are proposals that seek to awaken vocations and generate learning experiences independently of the mandatory content of formal education.”
“In addition, they are very valuable spaces and programs because they are spaces where there is no screen. So they also generate a great sense of belonging and community building in schools,” he celebrated.
And he added: “Schools are open for children in other ways, even on days saturdays or in the school breaks where children access school as a place where they will learn. On Saturdays there are many open schools where children go to an orchestra to carry out their musical training on an instrument, or to a choir, or to a youth club, or to a children’s activity center.”
The socio-emotional challenge
“Neither the school can do it alone nor can the family do it alone. The reality is that you have to make an alliance and all children and young people need that community to strengthen the needs they have linked to socio-emotional well-being. I would say that the responsibility is shared like education itself,” Patronelli reflected.
And he highlighted: “Of course the kids spend many hours at school and it is where issues are often detected or tools are generated, but then there is the issue that they are at home and that is where they also the family has to act. That is why we believe that the information and tools that families must have today are very important to be able to carry out this responsibility. In fact, that’s why we created Family Schoolwhich is a public policy of the Ministry of Education that seeks to generate information and tools for families, to accompany them in the challenges they have in terms of accompanying their children’s learning or parenting and the challenges that arise around parenting.
“There is no manual to be a good father or mother, but there is valuable information that surely impacts good or effective parenting practices and that does have better results, not only in socio-emotional well-being, but also in the school climate, in performance,” highlighted the General Director of School Open to the Community.
Family School
When analyzing how to achieve the commitment of families with the school from management, Patronelli highlighted: “What I can guarantee is that all the activities we do are aimed at fathers and mothers, but mothers come. “90% of the people who participate or the adults responsible for children and young people who participate are women.”
“Women still take more responsibility for tasks related to family and parenting.“, he indicated and highlighted how “the kids highly value family support, family involvement. That is why we want to enhance the role of the family. The family has to be active.”
“Us we need the family presentthe active family, the family that can contribute, that accompanies, we want to generate listening. Not that they just leave their children and pick them up and that is the participation,” he said. And he added: “In the City of Buenos Aires we have the school cooperators as a formal organization in public schools. And to many mothers, when I ask them why they are part of the cooperator, they tell me to be closer to my son. And they tell me that the children are very proud when they see them active in the cooperative, generating an alliance with the director, accompanying school projects, generating conditions.”
“There are several indicators of goal achievement. The first is in socio-educational programs that are not mandatory, presentism. So, the fact that the city’s orchestras are made up of 2,000 kids is an achievement. Same thing, school holidays. Now more than 12,000 kids have registered for this winter. Year after year the number of registered people increases. and obviously it is something that children enjoy and families value,” he highlighted.
Build a new school
“We survey families continually to find out their needs. Very recently, in April, in a survey approximately 9,000 families participated. One of the questions was what concerns you can tell us about your children. The initial level families told us that their main concerns were, for example, the healthy habitsmore linked to what is the feeding and the autonomy of the boys. They were also very concerned about communication and language,” he shared.
And he pointed out: “In primary school, 6 out of 10 families said that what worried them most was bullying. After that the screens continued. And in secondary school, the lack of motivation. Screens appear on all levels.”
“We use this information to generate proposals for families. Then what has to do with the direct proposals to students is taken by each educational level and they generate the appropriate proposals so that it happens with the teachers at school,” he highlighted.
“Educational programs are a great example of what the school we want is like.. The school opens in a more relaxed way, the school meets the kids in a different way,” Patronelli said. And in addition to celebrating the motivation it finds in the kids, “if you go to tour a neighborhood, you will see that the school is decorated, it has more flexible spaces, the hallways are used, the patios are used as learning spaces, there is a lot of workshop space, music coexists with art, with sports, with some more formal activities, transversal content is seen, the groups have multiage.”
Source: Infobae
