Rubén Dario school is a public elementary school located in Raval neighborhood, in the city of Barcelona. 98% of the students that are enrolled in the school come from non European Union countries. Specifically, 31% come from Pakistan, 29% come from Bangladesh, 22% come from Morocco and the rest of them come from Latino America countries. This is the highest percentage of students coming from non European Union countries from the whole city of Barcelona. Aside from that, 59% of the students and families that attend our school suffer socio economic disadvantages placing our school at the second place of the whole city of Barcelona when it comes to the percentage of students with socio economic disadvantages. Because of this context, we are ranked as a high - complexity school.

 

We are a school with a total of 224 students from the ages of 3 years old to the ages of 12 years old. As a high - complexity school we do not only count with extra teachers but we also count with very specific staff, like one social educator and one social integrator, in order to assure the inclusion of all students. In total, 22 teachers and 6 other educational staff members are part of the school.

 

Three years ago, as a school we decided to enhance a whole new way to teach. Therefore, we did not only got rid of books, but we also started to apply new globalized methodologies, like project based learning, or to use formative evaluation, or to value school equity, by empowering our students’ culture or by participating in very valuable projects. Is for all of this that we are willing to participate in a project like this one, because we are not only going to learn collaboratively with schools from other countries, but also students are going to benefit from it and live experiences and opportunities that they would rather live outside the school.

 

Since we are already participating in another K229 project we have created an Erasmus+ Team formed by the head teacher, the Erasmus+ coordinator and the English teacher, who are also the steering committee of this team, plus the assistant head teacher, the academic secretary, the sixth grade class teacher, the music teacher, the physical education teacher, the social educator and the social integrator. They will be the ones to run the project based on the tasks and responsibilities defined in the quality plan. It is also very important to emphasize the fact that 7 out of the 10 staff members that are part of the Erasmus+ Team have a fix place in the school.

 

Finally, the participation in another K229 project is giving us a lot of experience to lead an even better project this time. The three members of the steering committee are taking a training on eTwinning and another one specifically related to coordinate K229 projects. Aside from that, the school can also count on its educational inspector who has a lot of experience conducting Erasmus+ projects and he is also an expertise on equity and global competence.