INTEGRAL EDUCATION
Its project is sustained on fundamental educative principles; the active participation of the whole school community by means of improvement groups; a democratic concept of teaching; and a way of educating that focuses on interest centres, learning through projects and the child’s cognitive stimulation from early ages.
All this is established as part of an integral human education, regardless of any political or religious choice, inside a space of respect towards the individual, the group and Nature.
Its methodology puts the stress on discovery and constructivism, through which the students gradually elaborate their own knowledge from the basis of their previous schemes. As a consequence, their critical and creative capacities are boosted, and the processes of analysis and synthesis develop in them in a structured way throughout the years of schooling.
The eagerness to investigate is internalized in time as an element that makes learning more dynamic, allowing the development of a solid deductive reasoning capacity.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Juan de Lanuza understands how important it is to focus emotional education as a systematic and structured process, coaching our students’ emotions as another aspect of their education.
Our centre’s cornerstone is the global development of our students; for this reason one of the fundamental working lines in Juan de Lanuza School is based on educating emotions as a means for personal growth.
Emotional intelligence must be part of the centre’s atmosphere, and it constitutes a part of our everyday life in each of the interactions between teachers, students and families. We try to make our students acquire an adequate emotional conscience that will grant them a better knowledge of their own feelings, helping them at the same time to identify those of others.
Our education project seeks in our students the development of socially balanced personalities, able to manage their emotions and understand other people’s feelings with a positive attitude towards life, as well as to develop social skills through which to express their feelings, share their opinions or show different points of view in an environment of mutual respect.
THINKING SKILLS
All human beings have the ability to think but we do not always do it with order, reflectively and effectively. That is why the school is committed to teaching students to think with skill. The world is constantly changing so it is the responsibility of the Center to help students have sufficient capacity to analyze and interpret the context that surrounds them as well as to adapt to new situations.
With this purpose, the teachers have been trained with the Canadian pedagogue Lane Clark and apply their methodology in the Infant and Primary classrooms, ensuring that the students are highly motivated, wanting to learn more, to investigate and discover the world that It surrounds them.
Sharing this objective in the Compulsory Secondary stage, we rely on the ideas of Robert Swartz and David Perkins. We teach students to value the reliability of sources, encourage critical thinking and creativity. We work so that the classrooms are a space in which a culture of thought is lived, so that the thinking skills of our students are developed by becoming part of the daily conduct. Infusing the routines and thinking skills with the curricular content and the development of the key competences we make our students learn to think, consider different points of view and become more autonomous.
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
Learning in school should not only focus on academics, but we should expose them to different situations that allow them to develop a wide variety of skills. Connecting students with international partners or with different cultures brings them closer to understanding global issues, and getting to know each other better, making students see themselves as thinkers, learners and agents of change is the goal of the Experiential Learning Program that unfolds an itinerary throughout of the stages of Primary and Secondary Farm School, Nature Classroom, Exchange Programs, White Week, Study Trip) allowing our students acquire a competence as Global Citizens (“360 degrees”).
Through Experiential Learning, students are awakened to the awareness of building their personal and academic profile, both inside and outside the classroom.
The program establishes some general objectives:
- Build a sense of belonging to the group / class through a shared experience.
- Expose students to new situations in a way that allows them to know themselves better.
- Increase your self-confidence.
- Offer teachers the opportunity to know the student as a person outside the academic environment.
- Offer students and faculty the opportunity to be part of an experience that goes beyond the individuality of each one.
INVESTIGATION AS A MEANS OF LEARNING
Our methodology considers cooperative work and investigation as basic tools for learning, and encourages creativity in all areas.
It consists of a technique focused on discovery and constructivism: the pupils elaborate their own knowledge through the discovery of reality, and interiorise the way to apply it practically, progressively developing their skills.
Little by little they add the new contents to their mental schemes in a way that is logical and significant for them, accomplishing their practical application to new situations.
It’s from this learning perspective that the students learn how to view information in a global way with an interdisciplinary focus and to investigate different aspects of a same topic, developing their analysis capacity, and at the same time obtaining the view of it as a whole.
This kind of learning trains our students to develop skills and abilities which are fundamental for the society we live in, which doesn’t conceive a way of learning based on isolated subjects, but a globalised one.
OPEN LANUZA
The OpenLanuza collective (www.openlanuza.com) consists of a group of professors and students from the Juan de Lanuza School in Zaragoza.
Our intention is to release the knowledge that is produced in our classrooms, so that other people, whether they are other teachers, students or anyone who has an interest in new technologies or new teaching methodologies, can take advantage of these resources to increase their knowledge, and use it in the way you deem most convenient, either in the classrooms, or outside of them.
On our page you will be able to find more than 40 projects documented by our students and sometimes also with their families. All these projects have as a common point the use of educational programming and robotics.
We invite our visitors to take our resources and not only use them, but modify and improve them. All together, with strategies to share our knowledge in an open manner, we will be participating in the construction of a better society, without speculation, abusive prices, and where the act of sharing is a pleasure and not an imposition in the best of cases.
BRINGING THE BEST (TUTORING)
The personalized attention that is given to students from the figure of the Tutor in a historical pillar of the personality of the center. From its origins, the Juan de Lanuza School has defended that “a student who feels loved learns better”. At present the center has the figure of the personal Tutor (in addition to the group) from 5th grade in order to get to know better the interests, abilities and abilities of each student. Each Tutor acts as a guide and companion of the students so that a road map is established, agreed with the families and the student, with individual objectives and their academic itinerary.
The tutor dedicates an important part of his / her time to get to know the student, in a way that sets objectives for the student that involve spending their time on relevant activities. The teacher / tutor constantly interacts with the students about their progress and aspects of improvement, as well as with the families.
It is about transferring responsibility for the success or failure of learning to the student. The teacher, the center and families are tools, guides or facilitators.
In lower grades (1st-4th Primary) a period is established for “My Tutoring” for all students with the Tutor in a way that promotes knowledge of the student.