In Peques and Más we bring a interview with Mari Luz Rico Palma. Is a Infant Education teacher at CEIP Cerro Coronado, located in a socio-culturally depressed area of Malaga, the La Palma neighborhood. Mari Luz studied Teaching and Psychopedagogy and obtained a provisional position in the oppositions of 2005. Since then I have worked in three centers in three different locations, obtaining a definitive place in 2007. She says she is a teacher by vocation and is passionate about teaching and children . He is also fascinated by the Internet and new technologies and that is why he also has a blog that is frequently updated on maestradeinfantil.com.
I met Mari Luz Rico by chance to see that in Microsiervos they cited one of the tweets he had launched from his twitter account and that he said: "To think that teachers are responsible for the education of children is one of the biggest mistakes that a father can commit "So to know what he meant by that phrase and many more things, we asked him to conduct an interview he accepted delightedly. There we go with the interview.
What is the current role of teachers in education?
The teacher's role today is not only to teach knowledge, nor is it reduced to helping the student learn to learn. Today, and as a consequence of the natural social evolution in which fathers and mothers work, families have been freed of responsibilities and have turned them into the teacher.
For this reason, we end up having a wide range of functions: teachers, fathers and mothers, nurses, caregivers, educators, etc., which should not be our task.
What is the current role of the school regarding education?
From my point of view, and depending on the educational centers in which I have worked, I would dare to say that the school has become a place where children are placed at 7.30 in the morning and picked up at 6 in the evening. The parents have to work and the schedules do not allow conciliation, so that the responsibility of these children falls to the school institution. And this is where all those functions that I mentioned before the teacher come in. The school used to be, like the teacher, a respected institution, today it is one of the most socially neglected. Politics and certain media have contributed to this.
What is the current role of parents regarding education?
The family is the first social institution with which a child is found throughout his life, and it is in it where he must acquire the norms of social behavior (knowing how to sit down, wait for a turn of speech, etc.). To this day I I would say that depending on the area in which you live and other factors we can find families with different vision of what their role is regarding education.
On the one hand, we have parents with university degrees, well placed socially, who even feel superior to you and come to tell you how you should practice your profession, getting to ask you for the didactic programming to review it. On the other hand, parents who do not have studies, who live in disadvantaged areas and who are not at all worried about what their children learn or stop learning while they arrive home without any injuries. Finally, and fortunately, both in one group and in another there are parents who care about the education of their children, collaborators with the school, who come to the calls of teachers, etc ...
What good and bad practices are being carried out in education in Spain?
Something that I have been able to corroborate over the years and that in my view is a bad practice in education, is the fact that once the student leaves Early Childhood Education and enters Primary Education, everything is structured excessively: alignment of tables and chairs, way of working much more individualized and less collaborative, etc. But the worst thing is that something disappears that is very good in children: the assembly. That moment of the morning in which students can verbally expose their ideas, opinions, their stories, without being directed. The student must acquire oral comprehension before reading but we continue to insist on what the Decree marks and the child has to read through noses, even if he does not understand anything.
In the same way, a bad practice is the realization of activities and tasks that are totally decontextualized. Students must know what the things they learn will serve them, we continue with different textbooks but with the same tasks. Meaningless and repetitive tasks, so if in one of them you change a data slightly, the student can no longer solve them. As good practices in education we have many examples of teachers who innovate every day so that education is autonomous, nothing squared and repetitive. There are many ways to do or have good practices in education. I am sorry to be so negative in this question but I think that bad practices beat good ones.
How do you use technology in the classroom or how would you like to use it?
In my classroom I have a digital whiteboard, a projector, a laptop and a PC that does not work, however old. The board and the projector are courtesy of the publishing house with which the school works, otherwise they would not exist in Infantil. The way of working in the classroom is very different from what it could really be. Internet is not part of Early Childhood Education in my school, despite being within the curriculum as a tool that helps attention to diversity, and as a transversal axis.
My way of working with the digital board is through recreational activities that allow the student to interact and let him direct his own learning, selecting those that best suit him. If you had Internet in the classroom, the story would vary a lot, since it opens up a whole world to explore, even allowing the student to see things he could never see. I think that in Spain "School 2.0" was and is poorly planned. It cannot be said that we have 2.0 schools because students are handed laptops and digital boards and projectors are placed.
You have to think about things, invest with discretion, analyze many variants, motivate and train teachers, and a whole long list of mistakes that were made and still committed.
I have to say that technologies in schools are far from being fully exploited.
How do you stimulate and work creativity in children in the classroom?
The first thing to work creativity in children is not to kill what they already have. Why do we always tell children that chickens are painted yellow, that people's faces cannot be painted blue, that trees are green and brown, etc.? Sir Ken Robinson, a great communicator and guru worldwide on creativity issues, says: "We need teachers who are not only able to teach things, but also leave children with spaces to cultivate their talent. Each person learns differently, by that's important the way of teaching. "
The education system must change. We can not enter at 9 in the morning and start as real robots to release information through our mouth, information that the student can find in books and on the Internet with ease and probably better explained, pretend that they keep silent, that they do not move and that Don't bother too much. So day after day. Not only do we kill creativity, but the strange thing is that there is no more dropout rate.
What topics do you discuss in your blog and what kind of opinions or comments do you receive?
In my blog I deal with many topics, all related to education: personal opinions, advice, legislation. I can not finish giving it the form that I would like it to have but it is also true that I dedicate very little time and that I must change it. From September I would like to put questions of new technologies applied in the classroom, children's health advice (nutrition, prevention of risks at home, etc.), interviews with personnel specialized in these issues and the odd thing. Maestradeinfantil.com still has 100% to my liking, but little by little I am improving it. And the comments are few, really, but always in a good tone, more critical or less critical but in any case they are accepted, that makes us all grow.
Y So far the interview with Mari Luz Rico which has allowed us to know in much more detail the challenges faced by nursery teachers in a public school. We thank you very much for your generosity for dedicating your time and we will follow you on your blog and on your twitter account to learn how education evolves in Spain.
