Welcome to this month

April 2012

It’s party time for Gisela’s Light!

It is just a year ago when this blog started and the activity here has been rather important: visits to many different schools, thoughts about every educative issue that came in my way, readings, fun stuff, music, poetry, articles, press, photography, praises, critiques... and everything with lot of passion.

I give you here a little musical present En la imaginación, Sílvia Perez Cruz i Javier Colina Trio.

How do children talk? I have the opportunity to be in places where children are allowed to express themselves, and with their early language there are many funny things that they say... I’ve laughed a lot this past month, I give you here two examples (or the complete text in Catalan here PDF):

- two girls of 4 years old play with a magic wand: “What do you want me to convert you?” In Catalan, we conjugate the verbs, and here she said a wrong conjugation and makes it funny.

- At the cau, we present the theme of the camp. One of us say: “Maybe we’ll see deers” (in Catalan: cérvols). Everybody goes excited and one of the girls goes: “has it got four?” And we say: “Four what?” “Four petals”. She was confused between the word trevol (clover) and cérvol (deer).

Read this documentation about the process of learning to share the lunch that we made with the cau on a walk. Here PDF (in Catalan). We’re going to camp very soon that after all the theory preparation we are looking forward to put it into practice.  We’ll tell you next month because lots of things are going to happen for sure.

At the beginnings of las month we visited provably the best school in the entire world!, or at least... among the ones I know (haha): Martinet. I’ll post here a description soon.

We went to the amazing duo Pau Figueres and Gemma Humet… and we couldn’t bear to feel such light and enrichment of music. We truly loved it.

Talking about music, we will have many concerts this April. Here we go with the Cor de Noies de Matadapera. We will be at:

Reus (Sala Auditori de Santa Llúcia, 18h

Barcelona (Casal Catòlic de Sant Andreu), 18h

Terrassa (Casal Sant Pere), 18h

And with Cor de Dones de Sant Celoni, you can come to listen to us at:

Sant Celoni (Ateneu), divendres 13 d’abril a les 21h

Santa Perpetua de la Mogoda, diumenge 22 d’abril, 12.30h

We have been to the Parents Weekend at Brockwood with Marina. It is always a joy to come back and to meet old friends and new friends. We sang on the informal evening, we visited the pavilions, we attended to few classes, we talked and laughed a lot, we enjoyed the sun that the English weather gave to us, but we also made a bit of rota, morning jobs, meetings... which could not be missed out!

And my favourite party of the year is going to happen again: Sant Jordi. Any book that I should read or have for my childrens book collection, here the "50 to make 400 list"?

Love and light,

gisela

                                                                                                                       
Welcome back,

It seems it has been ages ago since we wrote because this last February has been speedy and full of action, I’ll tell you everything now:

The most significant thing is that after discovering Summerhill (three years ago!), after knowing it still exists (last summer), after having watched the film several times, after talking about it to every single person interested or not, after almost being there working... after all... I finally put my feet there!

The story of the hole trip is a real adventure and everything that happened to me until I saw the sign “SUMMERHILL”... everything that happened while there, all the sensations, all the interminable questions and answers, the place, the people, the environment, the emotions... everything you can read it here (PDF in Catalan). Please ask for the translation.

In this marvellous trip I met old friends, I almost slip on a dark, cold, snowy London street, I met new people from here and there and everywhere but everybody from the same world, after 3 years I came back to Brockwood and I realised it was just yesterday I was there running throughout the corridor, having tea at the Center, at the Grove, cutting tomatoes at the Kitchen and doing some rota...  

We’ll be all the family back to Brockwood again at the end of this month and provably again on May where I will establish some relationship with the kindergarden Wildflowers and Inwoods!, with I shared different moments already, few years ago.

It is more than great that we have this TV program now, “Teachers” (Mestres). It is exciting for me to have this “debate” even if it is through the screen because it is amazing the opinions of so many people who actually talk about the same. The program is in Catalan but you can watch but you can try o watch the ones I liked the most (and if you are more interested about it, do not hesitate to ask a translation to me). About different methodologies here (pàgina web escola El Roure Gros). Or the other chapters (IV How do we learn? And V School  and family) here(tres a la carta) 

We re-descovered Teresa Forcadas with an interview to the ARA newspaper and this video about “the hyperactivity label after the medicine”  (ARA TV).

Now I am even more convinced that to learn has to do (almost only) with self-confidence. Now is the time for you to watch a video in English “helplesslylearning” (youtube)!   You can also watch that other video (youtube in Spanish) with Esther Bonal talking about the Xamfrà Center, very motivating. 

You don’t need to understand or speak any language if you speack and understand the language of beauty to watch this: “The fantastic flying books” (youtube).

Please, visit Marina’s blog with new pictures abou her project Bedroom Series and other stuff going on at Brockwood like our recent visit there! I opened a new page called “images” where you can actually see everything I write here! (Since the Flickr space is all full, but you can still visit).

Very early this month we have visited already the Martinet School (Ripollet, Catalulnya) and we have liked it a lot (more than anything we have been to). But I won’t be able to tell you until April! 

And we’ll wait for you next month with all the news and new discoveries and the surprises we still don’t know, they will happen. How exciting!

Feel yourself like a princes but don’t treat the other like a subject,

gisela

                                                                                                                               
 WELCOME TO FEBRUARY!

This month is coming with excitement: we will celebrate the Carnestoltes, Gitanes and my birthday! We’ll post the pictures next month; by now, you can view the first snow pictures here (PDF). And more cool things will happen... keep reading.

It has started very well as a volunteer in the CAU, finally, with a good –well thought pedagogical task with a great team. Can you believe it?, as a lesure education... I can’t be more motivated. Thank you to all who have insisted. You can read the preparation and realization of the first day here (PDF in Catalan); every constructive opinion will be welcome. And you can read here (PDF in Catalan) about the summery I wrote about the “agrupament escolta” to know what it is all about; I loved it.

I will be travelling again to England to visit Summerhill! I have been so close, I just have to be there once. I will tell you the experience on my return!

You can watch the drawings my children make here (PDF); this makes me think of another curiosity: how do you see the quality of a drawing? What psychology can you see in a drawing of a child? Although, this month the biggest curiosity is: What is the systemic pedagogy?

We have been back to the studio recording again with a new series of world traditional songs! We have sung in English, Turckish, Japanesse, Basc, Finish, Braselian... Listen to Momigí (Japan) and Syahamba (Africa). You can also visit the study where we’ve recorded here (Green House Studio, webside in English) and please, listen to “ThanksRobbie”.

Read the press I have found over this past month, you’ll find about homeopathy, Pep Guardiola, the Carles Capdevila articles, among others here (PDF in Catalan).

Watch here (youtubein Spanish) the emotional video about the Biblioburro. And more audiovisual news are here: TV3 has started a series called “Teachers” (“Mestres”) and we already watched the first one. You can do it here (Tres a la carta in Catalan).

With all that, life becomes interesting with light and passion... and as they used to say “Núñez is still the Barça president...” I could say: “university is still in its place, or lower (we will end taking classes on hell), and a little proof is here (PDF in Catalan).

A real big hug, like the ones you like to give and to receive!

Gisela.

                                                                                                     

JANUARY Happy New Year!

I hope all your wishes become true and you have a good 2012 full of health.

We are still on holidays so the research has stopped a tiny bit. But Reis are coming soon and I planned a “list of children books” for my collection to complete it up to 400. You can find it here.

Of course, there are not English books because I do not know what is on the English book shops!

Before the Christmas break we presented our CD “Cançons per a l’Escola Bressol”. You can read the presentation here (PDF)  and download the music free, the cover, the images here (gisela’s light page) We hope you enjoy it and use it well!

You can still check older entrences, especially the chronicles of a real educational world from Desember, in which there are two visits to a alternative schools.

Take care of your friends and, as always, LOT OF LIGHT,

Gisela.